Manager, Engineering

Job Summary
The primary role of the Engineering Manager - API & Integrations is to lead the team, and own the systems, that connect operating platforms with each other and with our customers, partners, and internal applications through APIs, event-driven data pipelines, and AI-facing services.

• The Engineering Manager is responsible for Connect, our integration platform built on Node.js/TypeScript and AWS. Our SAP Transportation Management (TM) platform is the current center of gravity, but the role spans many system integrations: transportation and freight-forwarding platforms, customer portals, finance and accounting systems, and customer, carrier, and partner applications.
• This is a hands-on, player-coach role. The incumbent is expected to contribute production code alongside the team, including design, implementation, and code review on the core platform services, while running the team's sprint process and rituals.
• The Engineering Manager is responsible for training, coaching, and motivating team members, and for the accurate, timely delivery of API and integration requests from intake through go-live, as well as ongoing support after go-live.
• The incumbent exercises consistent and independent judgment and decision making while leading and motivating employees to meet customer integration requirements, delivery commitments, and a high standard of platform reliability.

Key Responsibilities
The key duties and responsibilities of this position consist of, but are not limited to, the following:
Leadership Accountabilities

• Ensure team members are appropriately trained and performing to the standards of their role through ongoing coaching, feedback, and performance management.
• Recruit, interview (including technical interviews), onboard, and develop engineers in the U.S. and Cebu, Philippines. Support career growth and set quarterly objectives (MBOs) for the team.
• Assign tasks and duties on new and ongoing projects. Run the team's agile cadence: two-week sprints, daily stand-ups, backlog grooming, and retrospectives.
• Set team goals and objectives aligned with the company's technology strategy. Own the team's portfolio initiatives and report status to leadership.
• Identify team staffing needs and support budgeting, including quarterly capitalized-labor (CapEx) time reporting.
• Keep company peers and team members informed of platform changes, integration impacts, and industry developments. Facilitate cross-team technical forums such as dev-lead stand-ups, design reviews, and code-review sessions.

Job Specific Accountabilities
Hands-on engineering & platform ownership

• Contribute production code as an active member of the team: design, build, test, and ship features and fixes on the core integration services.
• Own the architecture, roadmap, and quality of the Connect services: system and customer-facing APIs (including version lifecycle and deprecation), SDKs, document routing, and Kafka-based ETL/change-data pipelines with replay and tombstone handling.
• Act as the primary technical counterpart to the development teams that own connected platforms such as SAP TM: define API requirements, test and validate new endpoints, file defects, and coordinate promotions from test to production.
• Act as the code-review and staging-release gate for the team's repositories. Prepare changes for production approval and set coding, testing, and documentation standards.
• Own and evolve the team's AI-facing services (e.g., MCP servers that expose integration capabilities to AI tools) and the evaluation practices that keep them safe and reliable for internal and external users.

Integration delivery

• Own intake-to-delivery for API and integration requests: requirements, prioritization with Product/Operations, development, QA, go-live, hypercare, and ongoing support, with defined service levels at each phase.
• Serve as technical reviewer and approver for business requirements documents (BRDs) involving the platform. Author technical requirements and solution designs.
• Oversee onboarding of API customers and partner applications, including secure credential provisioning and access management.
• Partner with the EDI Development team on integrations that span EDI and the platform, such as EDI bookings through the TM APIs.

Support & reliability

• Provide post-go-live support for the team's integrations. Partner with the Helpdesk team on ticket triage, escalation paths, and knowledge articles so routine issues are resolved quickly and engineering escalations are handled well.
• Lead incident response for API and pipeline outages: coordinate triage, communicate with affected stakeholders, and drive root-cause fixes.
• Maintain monitoring dashboards and alarms for the team's services, in partnership with DevOps and Platform Services.
• Keep runbooks, architecture documentation, and knowledge bases current so there is no single point of failure on the team.

Vendors & stakeholders

• Manage technical relationships with integration vendors and partners (e.g., customer and carrier platforms) and with internal stakeholders across Operations, Sales, Customer Success, Finance, and Strategic Operating Partners.
• Support compliance and security reviews of partner data flows, including inventories of API clients, data flows, and data retention.
• Perform other integration/engineering tasks as assigned by the company.

Qualifications & Skills
Required Qualifications

• Minimum 7 years' experience in software engineering or systems integration, of which a minimum 2 years' experience is in a management or technical leadership role.
• Currently hands-on: able to contribute production code while leading a team, not only direct others' work.
• Hands-on expertise in Node.js/TypeScript backend services and REST API design: versioning, authentication, schemas/validation, and documentation.
• Experience integrating multiple enterprise systems: APIs, event-driven messaging, file-based exchange, and data mapping/transformation.
• Experience with AWS (e.g., ECS, Lambda, CloudWatch) and CI/CD with GitHub Actions or similar.
• Experience with event streaming / data pipelines (Kafka or equivalent) and relational databases (PostgreSQL and/or SQL Server).
• Track record of leading distributed or offshore engineering teams with agile delivery.
• Ability to translate business requests into clear technical requirements, and to say "not yet" with a prioritized plan.
• Strong written communication and the discipline for asynchronous work across time zones (U.S. Pacific Philippines).
• Proficient in English communication (verbal and written).

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, MIS, IT, or a related field.
• Experience integrating with SAP TM or other enterprise TMS/ERP platforms (SAP S/4HANA, CargoWise, Oracle OTM).
• Experience building or operating AI/LLM integrations: MCP servers, OAuth/SSO for AI tools, evaluation frameworks, and AI-assisted development (e.g., Claude Code).
• Domain experience in freight forwarding, logistics, or transportation.
• Familiarity with Jira, Confluence, and IT service-management tools.

Leadership Skills

• Strong leadership and management abilities.
• Highly motivated, patient, positive, and proactive team player who can teach, motivate, and empower the team to perform their roles as effectively and efficiently as possible.
• Be a positive representative within the industry.

Work Schedule

• Full-time schedule of a minimum of 8 hours per day, with the flexibility to complete all required job duties and responsibilities.
• Regular overlap with team members in the Philippines, and occasional after-hours availability for production incidents