EM 3 - Engineering Manager

I lead the execution of technical projects within a functional area with guidance while fostering an environment of high engagement and operational excellence, developing the team to deliver key results on a healthy cadence, and aligning efforts with the company's priorities.

Scope

You lead your team to research, plan, and execute on a roadmap. You ensure the direction of your team by collaborating with key stakeholders across the department. You partner with and bridge quality, design, product, data engineering, and data science to enable successful project outcomes. You coach and develop short-term and long-term career plans for your direct reports.

Craft

Your focus is to have your team deliver an aligned result by managing engagement while providing coaching and career mentorship.

You align the team’s purpose and direction with the business. You facilitate estimation and work breakdown sessions to enable a sustainable velocity and regular delivery cadence. You regularly seek opportunities to learn more about the business and infuse learning into your team.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Direction	I collaborate with my manager to plan and execute projects for my team. I ensure the team knows monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual objectives. I manage the integrity of the team’s work backlog - balancing product work, technical debt, bugs, and discovery work.
Career	I create concrete career action plans with my direct reports. I perform quarterly goal setting, annual reviews, and weekly 1:1. I actively seek out career opportunities for my direct reports.
Alignment	I align the team’s execution on projects set by the organization's leaders. I partner with cross-functional partners to balance members' values, feasibility, dependencies, and release dates. I regularly seek opportunities to learn more about the business and infuse learning into your team.
Execution	I ensure efficient and on-time delivery of my projects. I provide input on product roadmap to appropriately manage risk, quality, available resources, and scope. I facilitate, coach, and guide my team on estimation to enable on-target delivery. I ensure my team is diving towards execution and operational excellence. I set goals and objectives for my teams at the sprint, month, and quarterly cadence. I identify staffing and training needs for my team.

Communication and Collaboration

You have weekly 1:1 conversations with your direct reports to gauge engagement and provide direction and coaching. You have monthly career discussions that align with your direct report's Career Action Plan. You perform annual performance reviews for your direct reports.

You facilitate project kickoffs, daily standups, backlog grooming, release planning, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospective meetings.

You collaborate with your department lead to facilitate discussions where your team gains an understanding of business needs.

You enable the successful execution of your team’s projects by injecting the necessary technical context into road mapping and execution discussions. You meet with your cross-functional partners to ensure alignment and collaborate on communication across stakeholders and departments.

You can check in frequently with your team and ask for feedback on the team and project health. You use your knowledge, expertise, and relationships to ensure your teams are not blocked. You communicate your team’s wins broadly and express gratitude to your team.

You effectively escalate and request resources due to team and department needs. You update key stakeholders regularly on team progress. You identify risks and mitigation strategies for those risks and communicate them tactfully.

You ensure your team performs post-mortems and shares learnings appropriately.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Teamwork	Work cross-functionally with the product, design, QA, marketing, and membership services team to enable my teams to deliver impactful features. Enable my team to accomplish shared goals against the team roadmap. Connect senior management with team members, facilitating effective communication and ensuring coordination.
Accountability	Actively coach and track my team’s estimations, commitments, and completed work to ensure proper estimation and execution. Communicate updates to stakeholders on the status of my team’s work. Drive to improve my team's processes by soliciting and actioning upon feedback from my team to unblock any impediments. Manage team resources and budget effectively. Ensure your team performs post-mortems and shares learnings appropriately.
Data Driven	Empower my team to deliver key results aligned with company OKRs. Drive my team towards operational excellence by overseeing systems SLOs. Work with my product manager and quality assurance team to surface feature engagement, bugs, and retention.
Culture	Cultivate an environment of high psychological safety, encouraging open communication and the willingness to address concerns or mistakes without the fear of reprisal. Foster a positive and inclusive team environment where people can do the best work of their careers. Collaborate with learning and development to provide my team with opportunities to improve my team's capabilities. Enable and encourage my team to celebrate wins. Push the team to prioritize the needs of our members, ensuring their satisfaction and addressing their concerns.

Coaching & Mentorship

You actively support your direct reports by partnering with them to understand their career goals, strengths, and growth areas and collaborate to create a win/win scenario that aligns individual aspirations and organizational needs.

You leverage the Career Framework to establish clear expectations for your direct reports on their roles and responsibilities, ensuring they understand what is required.

You can give your direct reports actionable, constructive feedback to help them grow and develop in their roles. You effectively coach your team by building strong relationships with each team member, fostering a supportive and growth-oriented environment.

You identify key learning opportunities and bring them to the forefront for your team, enabling continuous development and skill enhancement.

You build team momentum and camaraderie by celebrating the wins and highlighting the successes of your direct reports, creating a positive and motivated team culture.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Coaching	I facilitate team retrospectives and champion continual improvement. I proactively measure and improve my team's product quality . I facilitate the resolution of conflicts on my team. I deliver timely feedback with actionable outcomes.
Mentorship	I seek to grow from direct reports. I proactively measure and improve an individual's performance.
Company and Department Influence	I ask questions when I do not have clarity in pursuit of a firm understanding. I identify key performance indicators that align with business goals.

Impact

You create impact by using your ability to drive both team and organizational success. You lead projects that directly contribute to business objectives. You ensure that your team's work is aligned with and supports the company’s goals. Your leadership enhances team efficiency and fosters a culture of data-driven decision-making, which is crucial for achieving measurable improvements in key performance indicators.

The impact you create extends beyond project delivery to shaping the overall success of your team. By enabling your team to excel through targeted initiatives and effective guidance, you create a foundation for sustained success. Your influence ensures that the team’s efforts consistently contribute to positive business outcomes, reinforcing the organization’s objectives. Ultimately, your impact is measured by the success of your team and the positive effects their work has on the company’s performance.

Responsibility	Behaviors
Projects and Initiatives	I am a crucial leader and player in delivering projects, enhancing team efficiency, and contributing to the overall success of the team and organization. I successfully drive initiatives enabling team success and contribute to organizational objectives. I ensure the team's projects affect positive business metric outcomes. I enable the team to make data-driven decisions to affect KPIs from my leadership.
Productivity	I align daily tasks and projects with overarching team goals and objectives. I leverage effective communication and mentorship to align team members with organizational goals. I collect feedback from team members on day-to-day operations and potential process improvements. I suggest improvements to existing processes for increased efficiency and productivity. I ensure a streamlined workflow and high performance.
Adoption and Innovation	Ensure the team adopts department best practices. Facilitate collaboration with cross-functional teams to assess the adoption of industry best practices and cutting-edge technologies. Promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning within the team. Champion a culture that values experimentation.

Moving to the EM 4 level

• You successfully operating at EM4 level for 12 months
• You successfully deliver solutions that impact company OKRs
• You have a proven track record of developing ICs from SE1 to SSE
• You have developed significant relationships within the organization