Engineering Manager

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.

With a focus on transparency and fairness, and deep empathy for partners in government and community organizations and the people that our partners serve, we’re building a movement of motivated change agents driven by meaningful results and lasting impact.

At Code for America, you contribute to exciting work while learning and developing in a supportive and flexible environment. Our compensation and benefits are holistic and thoughtfully curated to represent our employees and our mission. Help us drive real generational change that lasts.

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.

The pace of change in the policy and government landscape is accelerating at the same time that technology possibilities are shifting rapidly. Together, these shifts create new windows of opportunity to develop technical solutions that make critical public services more effective for the people who need them. Engineering Managers keep delivery moving through those moments, supporting staff and holding high delivery standards so that what we ship stays reliable and effective.

About the role

Code for America software engineers are involved in every stage of our products' lifecycle, from prototyping and design to developing features in response to user feedback, to operating technical systems at scale. The Engineering Manager leads a team of engineers doing that work, owning the quality of what they ship, the growth of the engineers on the team, and the durability of the systems they build and operate. Engineering spans multiple delivery areas, including Criminal Justice, Tax Benefits, and the Social Safety Net, and extends into new areas when the moment calls for it.

This is a player-coach role. You contribute hands-on to one engagement while overseeing your engineers' technical work across the others, staying close to the craft through design and code review rather than by being the primary author of the code. The Manager, Engineering is accountable for the team's technical outcomes, for its performance and growth, and for holding the bar on quality.

This role will report to the Director or Senior Director of Product Engineering and is expected to travel no more than 10% of the time.

Code for America is based in California and can employ those who reside full-time within the United States. This is a remote position.

In this position you will

• 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 that build new technical and professional skills.
• 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 the accountability that lets them grow into it.
• 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 at Code for America.
• Delivery & Execution
• Establish direction for technical work within a team, anticipating challenges, documenting decisions, and helping the team understand the why behind approaches, not just the what .
• Partner with product, design, research, and program leads to align on priorities and resolve cross-team dependencies before they block the team.
• 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 — speed vs. maintainability, the familiar tool vs. the right one, ideal vs. feasible.
• 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 — creating room to experiment and managing the transition.
• Support Engineering's culture of writing by producing quality documentation and learning materials for internal and external audiences
• Other duties as assigned

About you

• 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 and facilitate decision-making conversations.
• Demonstrated success leading multidisciplinary technical teams to build and operate technical solutions with testing, observability, and operational rigor that keep them reliable
• Experience developing and empowering collaborative, high-performing teams, and to manage 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 BDDDemonstrated ability to use AI coding tools judiciously, validating and refining generated code for quality, and modeling that discipline for the engineers you lead; more broadly, a curiosity about emerging AI tools, a commitment to using them responsibly and effectively, and the judgment to see where they add value and where they add risk.
• 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.

It’s a bonus if you have

• 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.

What you’ll get -

Salary

Code for America’s salary bands are transparent as a part of our commitment to transparency and fairness. As part of our hiring practices, we aim to target the midpoint of the 2nd quartile of the range for all new hires.