Associate Engineering Manager

About The Shop

The Shop is Sparq’s internal proving ground for AI-native consulting. When our consultants are between client engagements, they build here: in small, self-forming teams, on one-week sprints, demoing real working prototypes every Friday. It’s where we sharpen the craft of delivery and turn ideas into things we can put in front of clients.

A Day in the Life

• Own the weekly rhythm (Monday kickoff to Friday demo) so nothing slips through the cracks.
• You'll help onboard colleagues into the shop, turn them into teams, and help shape their growth with projects and problem sets.
• Watch the Friday demos and give specific, useful feedback: what landed, what didn’t, and how to make it better.
• Help builders get unstuck — often by helping them say clearly what they’re trying to build, not by writing code for them.
• Coach a consulting mindset: understand the business problem, find the champion, challenge the assumption.
• Be the operational point of contact for The Shop: the person who knows who, what, when, and where.
• Give clear, fair feedback to our practice leaders on how people are engaging and growing.
• Help us decide which parts of this job should become software/tooling - and build toward that.

What it takes

• Consulting background — ideally 2-3 years client-facing at a mid-size firm. You’ve run projects and sat across the table from clients.
• You give hard feedback well — direct, specific, and kind enough that people come back for more.
• You’re organized in a way that makes chaos manageable — you build structure where it’s missing.
• You’re AI-forward: comfortable with AI tools, curious about how they’re applied, and clear-eyed about how they change what “blocked” means.
• You can tell when a “technical” answer is real and when it’s fluff — without being a developer yourself.

Nice to Have

• You used to write code, or work close enough to it to direct traffic confidently.
• Conceptual familiarity with Git and the software development lifecycle.
• You can make a crisp short video or a clean one-pager.
• Depth in a vertical — financial services, healthcare, supply chain, or similar.
• AI-first culture — you’ll work alongside the latest tools and help shape how we use them.