Engineering Manager - Pathstream

Role Overview

Pathstream is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead one of our engineering pods, a team of 4+ engineers building and maintaining the platform that powers our learning and workforce-development products. This is a people management role reporting to the SVP of Engineering: you will own the growth, performance, and effectiveness of your team, while staying technical enough to set direction within your domain, drive delivery of broadly scoped initiatives, and hold a high bar on quality.

A core expectation of this role is to champion Pathstream's AI-native engineering practices within your team. We are looking for a manager who actively drives the effective and responsible adoption of AI-enabled development tools on their team, and who coaches engineers to get real leverage from them.

What We Do

Pathstream was founded on the premise that substantial unrealized economic and human potential exists within each organization's frontline workforce. We are reshaping the way employees and managers on the frontlines excel in their careers. We're a tight-knit, hardworking, mission-driven team of ~60 employees eager to scale our solution and transform careers across the United States.

Responsibilities

People Leadership & Team Craft

• Directly manage a team of 4+ engineers. Own their growth and performance end-to-end — regular 1:1s, growth plans, performance reviews, compensation recommendations, and timely, candid feedback.
• Own hiring for your team. Partner with recruiting to scope roles, run interview loops, and play a central role in evaluating engineering candidates and shaping hiring decisions.
• Deliver feedback proactively and partner on solutions. Offer timely, unprompted feedback that integrates new context as it emerges.
• Develop engineering talent. Demonstrate success in growing engineers, and establish formal mentoring relationships with more junior engineers.
• Be a steadying force and a positive influence. Provide team stability through priority and business shifts, bring everyone into the conversation, and publicly celebrate achievements.

Technical Direction & Execution

• Define and own your team's roadmap and technical direction. Influence team priorities to match business objectives and translate company strategy into sequenced, well-scoped engineering work.
• Own planning and prioritization for large initiatives. In partnership with leadership, estimate and manage timelines and risk, define success criteria, and sequence work efficiently.
• Guide your team through ambiguous, broadly scoped work — major refactors, new services, and other impactful changes.
• Maintain strong technical proficiency. Stay highly proficient in one or more technical areas and effective across a wide range.
• Hold a high quality bar. Identify where code structure and architecture can be improved for testability and maintainability.
• Make pragmatic trade-offs. Make sound, informed decisions about technical debt and velocity.
• Ensure technical documentation accounts for stability, performance, scalability, and business needs.

AI & Agentic Engineering Leadership

• Champion AI-native engineering on your team. Ensure your engineers are adopting AI-enabled development tools (Claude Code) effectively and responsibly.
• Coach your team on how to collaborate well with AI systems, when to use which tool, and how to evaluate AI-generated output.
• Embrace change introduced by evolving technology and help your team turn new capabilities into real, measurable leverage.
• Stay hands-on enough to be credible by using these tools in your own work.

Platform Health, Security & Operations

• Ensure your team operates production systems well, participating in on-call rotations and using observability tooling.
• Partner with engineering leadership on security and compliance, including SOC2, vulnerability management, and authentication systems.
• Translate operational pain and on-call insights into roadmap priorities and process improvements.

Requirements

Experience

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience and high proficiency in one or more technical areas.
• 2+ years leading and mentoring engineers as a team lead, technical lead, or engineering manager.
• Demonstrated track record of owning the technical design and delivery of broadly scoped work end-to-end.
• Deep understanding of scalability best practices and experience designing solutions that handle significant growth.
• Familiarity with modern web application stacks: Ruby on Rails, React, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, Docker, PostgreSQL, and AWS.
• Understanding of infrastructure automation, platform security, and DevOps practices.

AI & Technical Leadership

• Hands-on experience with modern AI-enabled development tools and agentic engineering approaches.
• Practical judgment about when AI accelerates engineering work and when it introduces risk.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Lead through influence and trust rather than authority.
• Communicate with clarity, brevity, and focus, with the ability to translate technical concepts for diverse audiences.
• Comfortable operating in environments with ambiguity and shifting priorities.

What We Offer

• Transparent and social culture, challenging work, fast learning cycles, and practical training
• Competitive salary range by geographic tier:
  • Tier 1 (NYC metro & San Francisco): $160K–$202K
  • Tier 2: $144K–$181K
  • Tier 3: $128K–$161K
• Comprehensive benefits package:
  • 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for you (50% for partner/spouse and dependents)
  • Flexible spending account (health)
  • Employee Assistance Program (mental health, financial health, legal support)
  • Free access to wellbeing apps like Ginger and Headspace
  • Flexible paid time off and 13 paid holidays
  • Generous paid parental leave
  • Short and long-term disability insurance (100% company paid)
  • Annual professional development budget
  • Company-provided laptop
  • Life insurance (100% company paid) and optional supplemental life insurance
  • 401(k) and discounted pet insurance