Software Engineering Manager

About the role

LawnStarter is an on-demand marketplace for lawn care and outdoor home services, expanding into pest control, pool cleaning and more. Its engineering team runs three brands on shared infrastructure and is profitable and growing. The Software Engineering Manager leads cross-functional delivery teams of 4-5 engineers, reporting to the Head of Engineering, and owns both delivery and people outcomes. The team is distributed across time zones, so async leadership and written communication matter.

Key responsibilities

• People development: concrete growth plans for every IC on the team, with retention risks identified and addressed
• Delivery: ship on cadence with predictable quality, surface risk early, manage scope and keep commitments
• Team health: address conflict directly, manage underperformance with a clear process, protect and develop top performers
• Cross-functional partnership: act as the link between the team and Product, Design, Quality Engineering, Architecture and Security
• Technical direction: weigh in on system design and catch architectural risks while removing blockers
• AI adoption: introduce AI tools and workflows such as code review, documentation, sprint planning and debugging, and measure their impact

Required profile

• Deeply AI-integrated: has used AI to accelerate code review, build prompts and lead team adoption of AI tools
• People developer: can give examples of growth plans, hard conversations and managing underperformers
• Remote-native: has led a fully remote team in a leadership position
• Direct in conflict: resolves tension quickly and does not stall
• Data-driven: tracks velocity, retention risk and IC growth and speaks to it in metrics