[Hiring] Engineering Manager @Spotify

Role Description

As the EM for Bonfire Squad you’ll lead a passionate full stack team of senior engineers building a high-impact artist promotion tool’s campaign management system and new features for our customers.

Bonfire needs a people leader who will leverage the talent and opinions of a senior-heavy squad to build great products and systems effectively together. A great manager for this team will have the technical depth and product thinking to make and explain decisions around the roadmap, project staffing, and cross-functional partnerships. You’ll build trust with your team and cross-functional partners by being transparent about what you’ll do and following through. This is a role for someone who enjoys being close to both the people and the work: coaching experienced engineers, creating clarity, and engaging credibly in technical and product discussions.

What You'll Do

• Foster strong working relationships among engineers, between engineers and cross-functional team leads, and between Bonfire and partner teams.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team of experienced engineers, encouraging product thinking, creating clear expectations, growth opportunities, and a healthy, high-performing team environment.
• Encourage constructive technical debate, engaging deeply enough with architecture and implementation to challenge assumptions and identify risks.
• Partner closely with Product and Design to shape priorities, scope, and product direction, bringing an engineering perspective to customer and UX decisions.
• Be accountable for healthy delivery, including prioritization, capacity management, operational health, and reliable execution of complex initiatives.
• Build strong relationships with partner teams, proactively managing dependencies and driving alignment across team boundaries.
• Stay close to the engineering craft and act as a player-coach when useful, including contributing hands-on to technical problem solving and engineering work.
• Help the team use AI effectively in engineering workflows and identify opportunities for AI to improve how we build and operate our products.
• Hire and onboard engineers as the team evolves, building the capabilities and knowledge distribution needed for the team to remain resilient over time.

Qualifications

• Good experience managing software engineers and a demonstrated track record of developing and managing experienced technical ICs.
• People management is at the core of your craft. You are comfortable giving clear feedback, navigating disagreement, setting expectations, and addressing team dynamics directly and constructively.
• You have a strong background in backend or full-stack engineering, and can engage credibly in architecture and technical design discussions.
• You leverage your product mindset to challenge assumptions embedded in product requirements and find engineering solutions that keep the engineering ecosystem healthy.
• You can balance empowering experienced engineers with providing leadership when the team needs direction or alignment.
• You can manage substantial technical and product dependencies with partner teams.
• You are a player-coach manager – willing and able to contribute hands-on when appropriate while recognizing that your primary responsibility is enabling the team to succeed.
• You are comfortable using AI tools and have a point of view on how AI can improve engineering effectiveness.
• You value healthy disagreement, clear ownership, accountability, and an inclusive environment where people can do their best work.

Requirements

• Flexibility to work within the North America region.
• This team collaborates across the Eastern time zone.

Benefits

• Health insurance.
• Six month paid parental leave.
• 401(k) retirement plan.
• Monthly meal allowance.
• 23 paid days off.
• 13 paid flexible holidays.