Manager, Software Engineering

AI2IO is seeking a Manager, Software Engineering to lead engineers, strengthen team capability, and create the organizational conditions required for sustainable software delivery. This is a formal people-management role with accountability for performance, development, staffing, workforce planning, team effectiveness, hiring, onboarding, retention, and the management systems that support a growing engineering organization.

This role progresses from complete ownership of people leadership and the delivery environment for assigned teams toward broader organizational effectiveness, management-system adoption, leadership-pipeline development, and readiness for larger engineering-organization scope.

• →Partner with Technical Leads, who own technical feasibility, estimates, dependencies, execution health, engineering standards, and team-level technical direction.
• →Partner with Architects, who own cross-team platform architecture and organizational technical standards. • Partner with Project Managers, who own the integrated schedule, formal stakeholder communication, scope coordination, project governance, and overall delivery process.
• →Partner with Product Owners and Business Analysts while preserving their authority for product direction, priorities, requirements, and analysis practices.
• →Escalate unresolved capacity, staffing, conduct, performance, organizational, or cross-team issues through the appropriate leadership path with evidence and recommended options.

• →Partner with the Director on workforce planning and hiring by defining capability needs, role requirements, interview plans, evaluation criteria, and recommended hiring priorities.
• →Lead structured and equitable selection processes, calibrate interviewers, document evidence, and make clear candidate recommendations within assigned authority.
• →Own consistent onboarding expectations, including role clarity, access, relationships, learning objectives, 30/60/90-day plans, and regular ramp check-ins.
• →Evaluate onboarding effectiveness through observable independence, role understanding, delivery contribution, and feedback, then improve the process based on evidence.
• →Identify retention risks early and coordinate appropriate responses with the Director and organizational partners. Improve Management Systems and Organizational Effectiveness
• →Lead adoption of improved performance-management, career-development, hiring, onboarding, workforce planning, and team-operating practices.
• →Define the transition, communication, management enablement, governance, and success measures required for major practice changes.
• →Evaluate whether adopted practices improve clarity, fairness, staffing effectiveness, internal growth, leadership continuity, and organizational sustainability.
• →Identify patterns spanning multiple engineering teams and coordinate improvements with peer Managers, Technical Leads, Architects, Project Managers, Product Owners, and the Director.
• →Improve role clarity, escalation pathways, shared staffing practices, cross-team resource coordination, and management consistency.
• →Simplify or retire management practices that add effort without producing useful decisions, employee support, or organizational outcomes.

• Establish team practices that support candid discussion of risks, uncertainty, mistakes, technical disagreements, workload concerns, and alternative viewpoints without retaliation or individual blame.
• Respond to observable indicators such as unresolved conflict, sustained workload imbalance, recurring escalation failures, avoidable attrition concerns, or reluctance to raise delivery problems.
• Address interpersonal, performance, conduct, or employee-relations concerns through appropriate management and people-process channels rather than delegating formal people accountability to Technical Leads.
• Create dependable communication rhythms so employees understand priorities, organizational changes, decisions, and available support.
• Maintain appropriate confidentiality while ensuring leaders receive the information required to address material organizational risk.

• Partner with the Director and organizational partners on hiring strategy, compensation planning, career frameworks, workforce design, culture programs, and organizational change.
• Translate organizational priorities into team capability, staffing, development, communication, and operating plans.
• Advise leadership on the people and organizational implications of delivery commitments, technical investments, reorganizations, or capability changes.
• Represent team capacity, capability, succession, and organizational risks in department planning with concise evidence and decision-ready recommendations.
• Maintain responsible stewardship of confidential employee and organizational information.

• Demonstrate effective leadership across multiple teams or a substantial engineering area rather than only one assigned team.
• Develop other Managers and Technical Leads and sustain outcomes through those leaders rather than direct personal involvement in routine team decisions.
• Expand ownership of workforce, succession, organizational design, management systems, and department level capability planning.
• Translate organizational strategy into staffing, operating, investment, capability, and leadership-development plans.
• Demonstrate sustained judgment in balancing employee needs, delivery outcomes, technical capability, organizational risk, and business priorities.

• Direct reports understand their role expectations, receive timely feedback, and have credible development plans.
• Performance concerns, recognition, and growth opportunities are addressed promptly rather than deferred to formal review cycles.
• Technical Leads retain clear technical authority and receive effective management partnership.
• Teams have sufficient staffing, capability, role clarity, and organizational support to deliver sustainably.
• Delivery, workload, retention, capability, and succession risks are visible early and addressed with clear ownership.
• Hiring decisions reflect documented capability needs and structured evaluation, and new employees receive consistent onboarding support.
• Management practices are applied consistently across comparable roles and teams.
• The engineering organization sustains delivery during leadership absences because ownership, decision paths, and critical knowledge are distributed.

• Demonstrated experience managing performance, providing difficult feedback, recognizing strong contribution, developing talent, and applying fair career expectations.
• Experience conducting performance reviews, promotion assessments, career calibration, and documented performance-improvement processes.
• Demonstrated ability to build healthy, capable software teams while preserving clear authority for Technical Leads, Architects, Product Owners, and Project Managers.
• Experience with workforce planning, capacity planning, skill-gap assessment, succession planning, and evidence-based staffing recommendations.
• Experience defining roles, conducting structured interviews, selecting candidates, and improving onboarding and retention practices.
• Sufficient technical depth to engage credibly with engineers and technical leaders, evaluate delivery and operational risk, and understand tradeoffs without directing implementation.
• Experience partnering on delivery and operational risk, cross-team dependencies, organizational blockers, and sustainable workload management.
• Demonstrated success leading organizational change and adopting improved management or team operating practices.
• Experience managing distributed or remote software teams and communicating effectively across technical, product, delivery, and organizational audiences.
• Ability to handle confidential employee information responsibly and partner effectively with HR or people operations functions.
• Excellent interpersonal, written, verbal, coaching, facilitation, conflict-resolution, and organizational judgment.
• Prior experience as a Software Engineer Technical Lead, senior software engineer, or comparable technical leader. • Experience developing other managers or leading across multiple engineering teams.
• Experience with Azure DevOps, Microsoft Azure, C#/.NET, ASP.NET Blazor, SQL Server, Microsoft Graph API, or adjacent enterprise software platforms.
• Formal or informal project-management experience that strengthens sequencing, dependency management, risk visibility, and cross-team coordination without replacing the dedicated Project Manager role.
• Experience contributing to compensation planning, career-framework design, organizational design, or department-level workforce strategy.
• Relevant management, coaching, Agile, project-management, or technical certifications.
• Build capable software teams and management systems within a growing Microsoft-centric engineering organization.
• Partner with clearly defined technical, architecture, product, analysis, quality, and project-delivery leadership roles.
• Shape workforce capability, career development, succession, hiring, onboarding, and sustainable delivery practices.
• Develop engineers and emerging leaders through meaningful assignments, clear expectations, coaching, and evidence-based feedback.
• Contribute to the organizational foundation supporting business applications, engineering tools, automation, and AI-enabled products.

• Up to 5%, this may include travel to any or all 50 US states
• Travel is defined as physically leaving home on behalf of business activities including but not limited to client sites, meetings with other employees, meeting for business development purposes, running errands on behalf of the business, attending industry conferences, etc.

• 8+ years of professional software engineering or closely related technical-delivery experience, including at least 2 years of formal people management within a software organization.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Information Systems, Business, Organizational Leadership, or equivalent experience preferred.

AI2IO does not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters, employment agencies, or other staffing services. Unsolicited resumes include any resume or hiring document sent to AI2IO in the absence of a signed Service Agreement where AI2IO has expressly requested recruitment/staffing services specific to the position at hand. Any unsolicited resumes, including those submitted to hiring managers or other business leaders, will become the property of AI2IO and AI2IO will have the right to hire that candidate without reservation – no fee or other compensation will be owed or paid to the recruiter, employment agency, or other staffing service.