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NetBox Labs is seeking a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead one of our talented engineering teams. The company develops innovative software for network professionals, including NetBox (the world's most popular network source of truth), Orb (next-generation network observability), and related SDKs and plugins. Much of this development is open source and community-driven, though the role also spans source-available and proprietary software.
In this role, you will lead a squad of engineers day-to-day while remaining hands-on—reviewing code, participating in design discussions, and occasionally shipping code yourself to unblock the team or model best practices. You will drive execution by breaking down ambiguous problems into clear plans, setting sprint goals, removing blockers quickly, and holding the team accountable to deadlines. You own the full software development lifecycle for your team's projects, from planning and design through implementation, testing, and release.
You will run effective sprint planning, stand-ups, and retros using GitHub and internal tools, helping engineers break work into well-scoped, executable pieces. You will champion modern, secure software development practices while maintaining high quality bars without slowing the team down. Close partnership with product managers is essential—translating customer and community problems into shippable plans and pushing back with data when scope or timelines don't align.
Coaching and mentoring engineers individually is a core responsibility: providing direct, timely feedback, helping them grow technically, and building a strong bench for future hiring. You will foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and knowledge sharing within the team. As a liaison between your team and the broader tech community, you will support open-source contributors and guide community-facing initiatives where relevant.
You will report progress transparently to engineering leadership, flagging risks early. You must stay close enough to the code and architecture to make credible calls on technical trade-offs while trusting your engineers to own implementation details.
You will work closely with the Director of Engineering, the product team, and peer engineering managers to coordinate cross-functional initiatives, understand customer and community problems, plan cross-functional projects, and clear blockers together.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 2+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager or Team Lead, ideally in a player-coach capacity where you're still writing code or reviewing PRs regularly
- Track record of driving projects to completion on tight timelines, with a strong bias toward action and unblocking your team over process for its own sake
- Strong technical background sufficient to review designs and code, and earn credibility with senior engineers
- Experience with Agile methodologies, DevOps, and CI/CD in a fast-moving environment
- Proficiency with GitHub for code management, project tracking, and collaboration
- Solid understanding of software security principles and practices
- Excellent, direct communication skills—comfortable giving and receiving fast feedback in a remote, async-first environment
- Proven ability to coach engineers and help them grow, while still being the person who rolls up their sleeves when the team needs it
PLUS (nice-to-have):
- Experience with open-source software development and community engagement
- Networking industry experience
- Familiarity with Python, Django, Go, gRPC, or OpenTelemetry
- Knowledge of cloud platforms and services (AWS, Azure)
- Familiarity with containerization and orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Understanding of data privacy regulations and compliance requirements
