Staff Software Engineering Manager

ExpertVoice is seeking a Staff Software Engineering Manager to lead and develop a high-performing team of software development engineers. This role combines active software development with direct people management, including coaching and performance management, while ensuring high-quality, scalable software systems are delivered.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop a small team of software development engineers, including coaching, career development, performance management, and fostering a high-performing and collaborative team environment, while hiring and building the team over time
• Contribute directly as a hands-on software development engineer by designing and implementing scalable backend systems, services, and web applications that power ExpertVoice web and mobile experiences
• Lead architecture and system design for scalable software systems, setting a high technical bar for system design, code quality, and engineering practices across the team
• Own the quality, performance, and reliability of systems delivered by the team, holding engineers accountable for validating their work through strong automated testing and development practices
• Partner with engineering leadership to evolve testing and development practices toward a more shift-left model, where quality is integrated into development workflows through validation at appropriate layers, effective code reviews, and production feedback loops
• Improve engineering productivity and developer experience by evaluating and optimizing modern development tools, and continuously assessing emerging AI technologies for their impact on engineering workflows, productivity, and software quality
• Lead the adoption of AI-first development practices by coaching engineers on effective use of AI tools, identifying high-impact use cases, establishing best practices, and driving changes to development workflows to fully integrate AI into the software development lifecycle
• Drive successful delivery of engineering work by providing technical leadership, planning and prioritizing work, and collaborating on resource allocation across projects, ensuring predictable delivery of high-quality software within an Agile/Scrum environment
• Collaborate with product, UX, and engineering to design solutions, clarify requirements, and deliver features aligned with business goals
• Collaborate with other engineering teams to align architectural decisions, share best practices, and drive improvements to the overall engineering platform and development processes

Requirements:

• 8+ years of professional software development experience building and maintaining production software systems
• Demonstrated experience operating at a Senior or Staff Software Engineer level, including ownership of system architecture and technical design
• Strong backend engineering expertise with Java, Spring / Spring Boot, and SQL, including designing and building scalable APIs and backend services
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs and distributed systems
• Strong understanding of software architecture, design patterns, scalability, and system tradeoffs
• Proven experience managing software development engineers, including direct people management, performance management, mentoring, and career development
• Demonstrated ability to write clean, maintainable code with strong automated test coverage (unit and integration) and maintain high engineering quality standards within a team
• Experience working in or helping evolve teams toward shift-left testing practices, where developers take increasing ownership of quality through automated testing and CI/CD workflows
• Proficiency with modern development workflows and tooling, including source control, code reviews, and CI/CD practices with automated testing and quality gates
• Experience debugging, troubleshooting, and supporting production systems
• Experience using modern AI-assisted development tools in day-to-day engineering workflows, including code generation, code review, and testing, and advocating for their effective use by sharing best practices within a team
• Experience evaluating AI-assisted development tools and guiding decisions on their adoption by helping teams understand their impact on engineering workflows, productivity, and software quality
• Demonstrated ability to drive improvements in engineering practices, including testing strategy, development workflows, or team productivity
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to effectively influence technical decisions and align cross-functional stakeholders, including product, UX, and engineering teams
• Experience participating in or leading technical hiring processes, including technical interviews and candidate evaluation
• Experience contributing across the stack, with familiarity in modern frontend technologies such as JavaScript / TypeScript and frameworks like React
• Experience designing or building high-scale, consumer-facing web applications
• Experience working in or helping evolve teams toward developer-owned quality models, where testing and validation are integrated into development workflows rather than handled in a separate QA phase
• Demonstrated ability to drive adoption of new development tools or practices within an engineering team, including AI-assisted development and developer-owned quality practices, by establishing best practices and enabling effective use across the team
• Experience working in collaborative Agile environments with continuous delivery and iterative development practices
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience)