Engineering Manager

Elicit

We’re growing and need an Engineering Manager to help us scale our team.

About the role

This role is crucial to ensure our engineers can do their best work. It’s more about coaching and building a team than individual contributions in code.

Responsibilities

• Build and grow a high-performing engineering team
• Directly manage a team of up to 8 software engineers
• Coach engineers through technical growth, career development, and increasing ownership
• Help identify, hire, onboard, and develop exceptional engineers
• Ship ambitious and successful product features
• Partner closely with product, designers, and fellow engineers to prioritize tactical and strategic goals into an audacious roadmap
• Own the execution of a significant portion of Elicit’s roadmap
• Balance shipping quickly against building systems that remain maintainable as Elicit grows
• Remove execution bottlenecks and ensure the team consistently delivers high-quality work
• Multiply the impact of the team
• Develop engineers into increasingly independent technical leaders
• Give actionable feedback through regular coaching and performance management
• Foster a collaborative environment where engineers learn from one another and continuously improve
• Guide the team towards wise use of coding agents

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience
• 3+ years directly managing software engineers
• Experience leading engineering teams at high-bar startups
• Strong computer science fundamentals and the technical depth to earn the trust of senior engineers
• Experience shipping complex, user-facing products with measurable business impact
• A track record of helping engineers grow through coaching, mentorship, and clear feedback
• Strong communication skills and an ability to collaborate across engineering, product, and design
• Profound curiosity about language models, AI, and building products that improve reasoning and decision-making

Qualifications

• Founders, CTOs, or engineering leaders from seed or Series A startups who remained close to the code are excellent fits

What You’ll Actually Do

• Lead and develop a small, high-performing team of engineers
• Drive execution across complex product initiatives
• Partner closely with product, design, and research to turn ambiguous ideas into shipped software
• Give thoughtful feedback, coaching, and career guidance
• Participate in architecture discussions, system design reviews, and technical planning
• Improve how the team works rather than becoming another pair of hands on the keyboard
• Raise the quality bar for engineering and AI-assisted development

What You Bring To The Role

• Enjoy helping engineers grow even more than writing code yourself
• Care deeply about engineering craftsmanship without slowing delivery
• Comfortably switch between coaching a teammate, reviewing architecture, and discussing product priorities
• Prefer high-agency, low-process environments
• Are motivated by improving science, reasoning, and the long-term impact of AI

First Week

• Meet your team, understand the in-flight work, familiarise yourself with our product direction
• Ship a small feature or bug fix to see the engineering process end-to-end
• Participate in technical design discussions and code reviews
• Start building relationships through regular one-on-ones
• Pair extensively with engineers across the team to get to know the tech stack and your colleagues

First Month

• Take ownership of your team’s planning and delivery
• Establish a regular coaching cadence with each engineer
• Lead sprint planning, prioritization, and execution for your team’s roadmap
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering quality, process, or developer experience

First Quarter

• Your team is consistently delivering high-quality work; the impact of this work is measured and aligned with Elicit’s strategy
• Engineers on your team have clear growth plans and are making tangible progress
• You’ve earned the trust of the engineering organization through sound technical judgment and thoughtful leadership
• You’ve helped raise the engineering bar through hiring, coaching, architecture, or process improvements
• You’re operating independently as the owner of an important area of Elicit’s engineering organization

Benefits and Perks

• Flexible work environment
• Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and life insurance
• Flexible vacation policy
• $200 monthly wellbeing stipend
• 401K with a 6% employer match
• New Mac and $1,000 budget to set up your workstation or home office in your first year, then $500 every year thereafter
• $1,000 quarterly AI Experimentation & Learning budget
• Team administrative assistant to help with personal and work tasks

Compensation

We target starting ranges of $250k - $300k + equity for this role.