Engineering Manager

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Engineering Manager
Location

San Francisco, CA

Hybrid role requiring 4 days/week in the San Francisco office.
Compensation

$190,000 - $250,000 Base + Competitive Equity
Visa

Open to H-1B Transfers / OPT Transfers
No new H-1B sponsorship.
Company Stage

Series A - Growth-Stage AI / Vertical SaaS Company
Industry

Artificial Intelligence, Vertical SaaS, Waste Management, B2B Software, Business Operations, Logistics, AI Agents

About the Company

Our client is building an AI-native operating system for waste haulers, modernizing an industry that has traditionally relied on legacy software and manual workflows.

The platform brings together critical business operations including CRM, billing, dispatch, routing, sales, marketing, and operational workflows into a modern software platform enhanced by AI agents.

The company recently raised an $11M Series A and is scaling a small, high-performing engineering organization as it continues expanding across the waste management industry.

As an Engineering Manager, you'll operate as a hands-on technical leader and right-hand to the CTO, managing a distributed engineering team while remaining deeply involved in architecture, infrastructure, security, compliance, and production software development.

This is an opportunity for an engineering leader who wants to maintain a true 50/50 balance between people management and hands-on engineering while helping shape the technical foundation of a rapidly growing vertical SaaS company.

What You'll Do

• Manage a distributed engineering team of fewer than 10 engineers across the US, Latin America, and Europe
• Own people management responsibilities including coaching, performance management, hiring, and team development
• Serve as a technical right-hand to the CTO and help drive engineering execution and technical priorities
• Maintain a roughly 50/50 split between hands-on software engineering and engineering management
• Continue writing production code alongside the engineering team
• Lead backend-heavy engineering initiatives across the platform
• Drive architecture decisions for large-scale production systems
• Design and improve multi-tenant architecture and customer-specific product configurations
• Lead the company's SOC2 certification and security compliance initiatives
• Improve security posture, engineering practices, and development processes
• Establish and maintain strong engineering best practices around code quality, testing, deployment, and reliability
• Manage production infrastructure and monitor system health
• Own incident management processes and help improve production reliability
• Monitor infrastructure costs and optimize cloud and AI-related spending
• Track engineering performance metrics including releases, PRs, incidents, and production reliability
• Work closely with the CTO on technical strategy and architecture
• Partner with product and business teams to translate customer and operational requirements into scalable software
• Help engineers make strong architectural and implementation decisions
• Coach engineers through technical challenges and career development
• Build a strong culture of ownership, accountability, and high-quality execution
• Operate effectively with a distributed engineering organization
• Make independent technical decisions in a fast-moving startup environment
• Balance engineering velocity with reliability, security, and scalability
• Contribute directly to critical product and infrastructure initiatives
• Help scale engineering processes as the company grows
• Build software for complex, industry-specific business workflows
• Work closely with leadership to shape the company's long-term technical direction

Ideal Candidate Background
Experience Requirements

• 5+ years of experience across backend software engineering and engineering management
• Experience managing a team of 10 or fewer engineers
• Strong hands-on software engineering background
• Experience leading engineering teams while continuing to write production code
• Experience working at startups or growth-stage technology companies
• Experience building and operating large production systems
• Experience with incident management and production reliability
• Experience working with distributed or remote engineering teams
• Experience partnering closely with CTOs, founders, or senior technical leadership
• Experience owning technical projects from architecture through production
• Experience working in B2B SaaS or business software environments preferred
• Strong ownership mentality with demonstrated ability to take responsibility for technical and team outcomes
• Experience operating independently in ambiguous startup environments
• Strong technical communication skills
• Strong people leadership and coaching ability
• Strong problem-solving and architectural judgment

Technical Requirements

• Strong TypeScript engineering experience
• Production experience with Node.js
• Production experience with PostgreSQL
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals
• Experience designing and operating production systems
• Experience with distributed systems and scalable backend architecture
• Experience with multi-tenant SaaS architecture preferred
• Experience with APIs and backend services
• Experience managing production infrastructure
• Experience with incident management and production reliability
• Experience monitoring production systems and engineering metrics
• Ability to diagnose and troubleshoot complex production issues
• Ability to make architecture decisions independently
• Experience with security engineering and development best practices
• Experience leading SOC2 or comparable security/compliance initiatives preferred
• Experience managing cloud infrastructure and infrastructure costs
• Familiarity with AI agents or AI-powered software systems preferred
• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle and engineering practices
• Ability to review and contribute to production code
• Ability to balance technical debt, product velocity, reliability, and scalability
• Strong system design and architecture skills
• Ability to maintain hands-on coding proficiency while managing a team

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field preferred
• Strong technical education preferred
• Equivalent practical software engineering and leadership experience accepted

Soft Skills

• Exceptional ownership and execution ability
• Strong people leadership and coaching skills
• Clear and concise technical communication
• Ability to give and receive difficult feedback
• Highly collaborative and low-ego working style
• Comfortable leading distributed engineering teams
• Strong technical judgment
• Comfortable operating with high autonomy
• Strong ability to prioritize competing technical and organizational problems
• Comfortable making independent decisions
• Strong product and business judgment
• High execution velocity
• Comfortable working in fast-paced startup environments
• Strong accountability for team and system outcomes
• Ability to balance management responsibilities with hands-on engineering
• Comfortable working closely with founders and CTOs
• Strong incident management and crisis-solving instincts
• Ability to communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders
• Strong interest in vertical SaaS and complex business workflows
• Excited about building software for traditionally underserved industries
• Comfortable working on-site in San Francisco 4 days/week

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $190,000 - $250,000
• Competitive equity package
• Opportunity to work directly with the CTO and founding team
• True 50/50 engineering management and hands-on engineering role
• Opportunity to shape the technical foundation of a rapidly growing AI-native company
• High ownership over architecture, infrastructure, security, and engineering execution
• Opportunity to lead SOC2 and security initiatives
• Exposure to AI agents and modern AI-powered business software
• Fast-growing Series A company with significant opportunity for technical leadership
• Opportunity to build software for a large, underserved vertical industry
• Strong influence over engineering culture and technical strategy
• H-1B transfer support
• Hybrid collaboration in San Francisco

Why Join

This is an opportunity to join a high-growth AI-native vertical SaaS company modernizing a massive and traditionally underserved industry.

You'll operate as a true technical leader - managing a small engineering team while remaining deeply involved in architecture, production engineering, security, infrastructure, and critical software development.

You'll work directly with the CTO and founding team while helping establish the engineering practices, technical systems, and organizational structure required to scale the company.

If you enjoy leading engineers without stepping away from the code, solving complex production problems, building business-critical software, and operating with high ownership in a startup environment, this role offers exceptional technical and leadership scope.