Engineering Manager

About Niche

Niche is the leader in school search. Our mission is to make researching and enrolling in schools easy, transparent, and free. With in-depth profiles on every school and college in America, 140 million reviews and ratings, and powerful search tools, we help millions of people find the right school for them. We also help thousands of schools recruit more best-fit students, by highlighting what makes them great and making it easier to visit and apply.

Niche is all about finding where you belong, and that mission inspires how we operate every day. We want Niche to be a place where people truly enjoy working and can thrive professionally.

About The Role

We are looking for an experienced Engineering Manager who is motivated by building impactful products, growing individuals, and driving a high performance team. This is a pivotal role to the organization, tasked with managing the engineering efforts and direction for a talented agile scrum team focused on our student engagement platform, Niche Engage.

As an Engineering Manager, you will be responsible for the professional development, career growth, and performance management of your direct reports. However, your role extends beyond people management: you will serve as a product team lead, and a leader of the team’s culture, direction and execution. You will manage the team’s resourcing strategy and development operations, ensuring they have the skill sets and expertise needed to achieve their goals, and processes that are optimized for fast delivery and rapid learning.   You will partner closely with your Product Manager to clarify project requirements, manage the roadmap, and orchestrate the development process to ensure your team’s efficiency and success. 

As a product team leader, you will cultivate a deep understanding of the products in your domain and the technical underpinnings of how they’re built, ensuring you are equipped to represent your team’s roadmap and goals, advise on technical feasibility, and advocate for priorities. You will also monitor and surface team and technical health metrics, and take action on opportunities for continuous improvement.

What You Will Do

• Lead a global team of 6-9 engineers of various experience levels, guiding their careers and helping them have a meaningful impact on the team’s success
• Drive the team’s resourcing strategy and allocation, employing cross-training and promoting t-shaped skills to boost the team’s versatility and flexibility
• Lead by example to cultivate a culture of collaboration, engagement, high performance, and continuous improvement
• Ensure the team is equipped with the necessary resources, processes and strategic context to build quality solutions that can quickly deliver value to our users and clients
• Partner closely with your Product Manager to define problems, identify solutions, and break down projects into iterative phases
• Guide technical direction of your team’s initiatives through system design, architectural consult, and code review as necessary, ensuring engineering excellence
• Act as the primary point of contact for engineering on your team, representing the team’s work and priorities to stakeholders, leadership, and other product teams
• Identify and remove roadblocks that could impede the team’s ability to move quickly and deliver features in a timely manner
• Advocate for and implement a culture of data-driven decision making, leveraging metrics and analytics to inform choices, both for product roadmaps and team processes
• Ensure the team balances urgency over perfection, while maintaining high standards for quality and reliability

During the First Month:

• Learn about Niche by meeting with various team members to learn more about our company through our Onboarding meetings
• Meet and build a rapport with your direct reports, and cross-functional team members and other engineering managers
• Shadow engineering team members to learn more about our tech stack, the products we support, and our development process
  

Within 3 Months:

• Meet regularly with direct reports to discuss performance and career progression, and provide continuous feedback
• Develop a strong understanding of our business, the problem space and solutions we offer, and how your team’s strategy and goals align with that of the overall business
• Take initiative in finding opportunities to provide thoughtful, constructive feedback to team members through code reviews, pair programming, and team presentations

Within 6 Months:

• Build a solid understanding of the Niche tech stack and codebase, learning more about internal dependencies and relationships between systems
• Originate and steer an initiative to improve the impact and efficiency of your team on company goals
• Conduct talent assessments for your direct reports and participate in departmental calibration conversations

Within 12 Months:

• Fully own the operational health and development lifecycle of your team.
• Gain confidence navigating the Niche codebase and triaging technical work to the appropriate teams
• Work with other managers in shaping the culture and process of the broader engineering team
  
  

What We Are Looking For

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent experience
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience
• 2+ years in an engineering leadership role
• Experience managing engineers in an agile/scrum framework on globally distributed, cross-functional, collaborative teams
• Demonstrated ability to drive higher performance: analyzing team performance, identifying opportunities to improve, implementing changes and measure results
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, both verbal and written
• Strong hands-on experience developing modern multi-tiered user-facing applications
• Experience with Golang, Typescript, and React/Redux is a plus, but not required

Compensation 

Our national target base salary range is $143,200-$179,000, plus participation in our Annual Bonus and Stock Option Program. Base compensation will be commensurate with experience and skills.

At Niche, our Total Rewards Philosophy is centered around creating a workplace environment that attracts, motivates, and retains top talent by providing a comprehensive and competitive rewards package.  This philosophy is built on the principles of performance-based compensation, best-in-class benefits and work-life balance, and employee well-being.

Interview Process

Candidate experience is a top priority for our talent and hiring teams.  We believe in providing a transparent, authentic and comprehensive interview process where you have the opportunity to learn about us while we get to know you and your experience.  The interview process is outlined here:

• Phone Screen with Talent Acquisition Partner - 30 Minutes

• Video Interview with Hiring Manager - 45 Minutes

• Take Home Exercise followed by Technical Interview - 60 Minutes

• Team Interview - 60 Minutes

• Leadership Interview - 60 Minutes

Why Niche?

• We are a fully flexible workforce empowering our employees to choose to work remotely, in our Pittsburgh office or whatever combination suits you
• Full time, salaried position with competitive compensation in a fast-growing company
• Best-in-class 100% paid employee health plan, including vision and dental and supplemental coverage
• Flexible Paid Time Off Policy
• Stipend that allows you to build your work from home office in a style and function that suits your personal preferences
• Parental leave for all employees (12 weeks fully paid) in addition to short term disability for birthing parents
• Meaningful 401(k) with employer match
• Your ideas and work will make an immediate impact on our company and millions of users
• You will join a team that cares about you, our mission, our work - and celebrates our wins together!

Niche will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future for this opening.  

We are currently hiring in states where we currently have employees: AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, MO, NE, NV, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, DC, WV.

Candidates only.  No recruiters or agencies, please. Sorry, we do not offer relocation assistance.

Niche is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. Therefore, we provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable law.

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.