Engineering Manager (Core UI)

About the role

As the Engineering Manager for Core UI, you'll lead and grow a team of Design Engineers and Core Frontend Engineers. This is a people-leadership role with deep technical grounding. You lead through your team while staying close enough to the technical decisions to guide architecture, unblock hard problems, and hold a high bar for craft, accessibility, and performance.

Responsibilities

• Build and Lead the Core UI Team
• Lead, grow, and develop a team of Design Engineers and Core Frontend Engineers; own hiring, onboarding, 1:1s, performance, and career growth.
• Set the team's direction, goals, and priorities, translating platform strategy into a clear roadmap and execution plan.
• Foster a culture that values collaboration, inclusion, craft, and creativity.
• Mentor Design Engineers and frontend engineers, modeling strong craft, collaboration, and pragmatism.
• Lead UI-focused initiatives end to end, balancing ideal UX outcomes with delivery realities.
• Own the Core Frontend Platform
• Own SimSpace's core frontend repositories, design system (e.g., Monorail), component libraries, and overall frontend architecture—treating the platform as a product with a roadmap and measurable quality.
• Steward architectural decisions and manage technical and UX debt deliberately, balancing long-term health with delivery needs.
• Establish and enforce standards for code health, accessibility, responsiveness, performance, testing, and documentation across shared UI systems.
• Own the Partnership with UX Design
• Own the relationship between engineering and UX Design, ensuring alignment between design (Figma) and implementation (code, Storybook).
• Define workflows that turn design intent into production code predictably, and bring feasibility and engineering insight into design reviews early.
• Support prototyping workflows that let UX research gather customer feedback and iterate quickly.
• Drive Delivery and Cross-Team Execution
• Partner with Product Management to align frontend work with business objectives and timelines, and maintain the plans and resourcing for predictable delivery.
• Collaborate with other engineering teams and QA so shared UI systems integrate seamlessly and meet a high quality bar.
• Continuously improve Agile processes to enhance your team's velocity, quality, and delivery.
• Raise the Bar on Craft, Accessibility, and Consistency
• Champion accessibility (a11y) at the component, system, and organizational level, with WCAG-aligned standards and guidance.
• Drive UX quality, polish, responsive design standards, and consistency across the product—down to the error states, transitions, and keyboard interactions that make it feel premium—reducing UI inconsistency and UX debt.

Requirements

• 8+ years in frontend, UX, or design-adjacent engineering, including 2+ years directly managing or leading engineers.
• Proven ability to lead and grow frontend or UX engineering teams, including distributed or hybrid teams.
• Strong technical depth in TypeScript and React—modern component patterns and state management—enough to guide architecture and review work credibly.
• Solid understanding of accessibility (a11y) standards and how to operationalize them.
• Track record of partnering closely with designers, PMs, and engineers across teams.
• Hands-on experience with Agile methodologies, paired with strong leadership and communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Storybook, design tokens, and Figma-to-code workflows.
• Theming, white-labeling, and design token strategy.
• Frontend testing strategies (unit, visual, and accessibility).
• Comfort across the stack when needed (API integration, backend collaboration).
• Rapid UI prototyping and iterating against customer and UX research feedback.
• Experience integrating work from contractors or external teams.
• Bachelor's in Computer Science or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).