Engineering Manager - SearchApi

Engineering Manager

We are looking for an engineering manager to own delivery end-to-end so the founder can step out of the day-to-day loop. You run cadences, track every active project, surface risk early, and serve as the first escalation point when something breaks. You lead through clear writing and good decisions, acting as a "Manager of One" who creates other "Managers of One."

About SearchApi

SearchApi is a real-time SERP API delivering structured data from 100+ search engines and sources, including Google Search, Google Shopping, Google Jobs, Bing, Baidu, YouTube, Amazon, and many more. We power production workloads for Fortune 500 companies, AI startups, and developers who need reliable search data at scale.

We're a lean, profitable, bootstrapped team with no VC pressure or bloat—just people shipping real products to real customers.

🎯 Why Join Us?

• Own how the team ships: Delivery, quality, and process are yours to design and run.
• Close to the founder: You take the operational load so the CEO can focus on direction.
• Process that matters: On a small, fast team, good process is leverage, not bureaucracy.
• High bar, high trust: You hire and grow people who don't need managing.
• Bootstrapped and Profitable: We answer to customers, not investors.

🔧 How You Work

• Technical enough to read a plan or a PR and call BS.
• Live in GitHub and Notion; if it isn't written down, it didn't happen.
• Use AI to run a lighter, faster process while knowing where not to trust it.

💪 What You'll Do

• Run the cadences: Planning, standups, and retros (lightweight, useful, never theater).
• Track everything: Know the state of every active project and surface risk before it becomes a fire.
• Own delivery metrics: Cycle time, review latency, and reliability used humanely.
• Command incidents: Act as the first escalation when something breaks, coordinate the response, and run blameless RCAs.
• Grow the team: 1:1s, coaching, and maintaining a high-bar hiring pipeline.

✨ About You

• Shipped real delivery improvements with measurable before-and-after results.
• Technical enough to earn engineers' trust.
• Humane with data and calm during incidents.
• Excellent writer who makes decisions clear on the page.
• Self-directed and fluent in English (written and spoken).

Required Experience:

• A written example of how you ran a delivery process or unblocked a team (e.g., a real retro, incident RCA, or designed process).

We're Especially Looking For:

• Experience managing a small, high-output engineering team
• Incident command experience
• Track record of hiring at a high bar

Application Note:

• Include "Octopus Tentacle" in your application to confirm you read the listing.

🎁 What You Get

• Fully Remote work environment
• Equity share
• Profit sharing
• Mentorship and learning from the founder
• Annual team retreats