Engineering Manager - Code for America

Code for America believes government can work for the people, by the people, in the new digital age, and that government at all levels can and should work well for all people. For more than a decade, we’ve worked to show that with the mindful use of technology, we can break down barriers, meet community needs, and find real solutions.

Our employees build and transform government and community tools and services, making them so good they inspire change. We merge the best parts of technology, nonprofit, and government to help support the people who need it most.

About the Role

Code for America is looking for a talented Engineering Manager who will lead a team of engineers building and operating the systems that make critical public services more effective, delivering meaningful impact for the people we serve. In this role, you will supervise, coach, and develop the engineers on your team while contributing directly to the work yourself.

This is a player-coach role. You will contribute hands-on to one engagement while overseeing your engineers' technical work across others, staying close to the craft through design and code review rather than by being the primary author of the code. You will report to the Director or Senior Director of Product Engineering and is expected to travel no more than 10% of the time.

Responsibilities

Team Management & Growth

• Lead, coach, and develop the engineers on your team through regular check-ins and clear, candid feedback; create growth opportunities and stretch assignments.
• Provide oversight of technical delivery across 2–3 projects your team contributes to, monitoring progress, identifying and mitigating risks, and driving to successful, durable outcomes.
• Mentor staff on best practices and sound technical judgment, and lead by example, establishing patterns others on the team follow.
• Actively create opportunities for engineers to own meaningful work, with clear expectations and accountability.
• Proactively address conflict directly and promptly; mediate disagreements between team members.
• Recruit and retain engineering talent with the skill, mission commitment, and appetite for innovation to thrive.

Delivery & Execution

• Establish direction for technical work within a team, anticipating challenges, documenting decisions, and helping the team understand the why behind approaches.
• Partner with product, design, research, and program leads to align on priorities and resolve cross-team dependencies.
• Craft new features, write automated tests, and build monitoring that holds a high bar for quality.
• Work iteratively to ship minimal features, learn, and harden them to scale once proven.
• Own architecture and data-modeling decisions for significant parts of a production system, weighing tradeoffs across competing priorities.
• Contribute to design, implementation, and code review, and make technical trade-offs alongside your team, using AI-assisted development.
• Guide how your team adopts new and better ways of working (modern delivery practices, new stacks, and AI-assisted development).
• Support Engineering's culture of writing by producing quality documentation and learning materials.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of experience as a software engineer, engineering manager, or equivalent, with experience managing engineering teams.
• Experience across multiple languages, frameworks, or tech stacks with a demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into unfamiliar ones.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, including stellar writing skills, and a demonstrated ability to manage cross-functional relationships.
• Demonstrated success leading multidisciplinary technical teams to build and operate technical solutions with testing, observability, and operational rigor.
• Experience developing and empowering collaborative, high-performing teams, and managing through ambiguity in a fast-changing environment.
• Familiarity with how to apply AI and emerging technologies effectively, including how to anticipate and mitigate their risks, and experience with AI-assisted development.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and Infrastructure-as-code tooling.
• Experience with Agile Software Development models like Scrum, XP, TDD, or BDD.
• Curiosity about emerging AI tools and a commitment to using them responsibly and effectively.
• A deep commitment to Code for America's mission of making government services work well for the people who need them most.

Bonus Points

• Personal or professional experience with the social safety net or other mission-relevant government services.
• Experience in government, civic technology, or digital transformation initiatives.
• Experience leading matrixed, multidisciplinary teams.
• Familiarity working within complex, legacy, or regulated technical environments.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary Range: $128,945 - $157,850 annually (offers target the midpoint of the 2nd quartile of the range based on geographic location).
• Medical: At least one no-cost health insurance option for full-time employees (employee-only coverage), and a minimum of 80% of the cost of dependent coverage.
• Retirement: 100% employer match on the first 3% of contributions; up to 5% match for employees with 3+ years of service.
• Time Off: Open personal time off (subject to manager approval), minimum 14 paid holidays, org-wide closure from Christmas Day through New Year's Day, up to 96 hours of paid sick time annually, and 17 weeks of paid parental and family leave. Sabbatical of 3 weeks after 5 years of service.
• Remote Work Support: Laptop provided, one-time $700 remote setup payment ($200 stipend + up to $500 reimbursement), and $50/month cell phone/internet reimbursement.
• Professional Development: $500 annual stipend (with rollover up to $1,000), plus AI-related skills training.
• Working Hours: Collaborative working hours are 10 AM - 3 PM PT.