What Does An Engineering Manager Do?

WHAT DOES AN ENGINEERING MANAGER DO?

Published: Mar 28, 2025 – The Engineering Manager builds and leads a high-performing engineering team, drives innovation in product development and infrastructure, while ensuring seamless support for live customers. This position collaborates across departments to align technical and business goals, improve processes, and lead key projects, compliance efforts, and performance assessments. The manager also makes strategic technical decisions, supports teams in overcoming challenges, and drives talent acquisition and success criteria based on user-centered outcomes.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Engineering Manager

1. Engineering Manager Essential Functions

Bid Planning: Create bid plans to meet business and customer timescales.
Solution Development: Create innovative and compliant solutions while maintaining competitiveness.
Estimations and Scheduling: Compile and review estimates and schedules.
Risk Management: Identify risks and opportunities along with strategies to manage both.
Proposal Development: Build a compelling argument to clear bids through an internal business process.
Stakeholder Management: Oversee relationships with key stakeholders.
Business Strategy: Build on the business vision and position for the future.
Career Growth: Recognize current role responsibilities or aspirations for the next role.
Team Building: Build an exceptional team of engineers by hiring and coaching.
Team Empowerment: Empower the team to achieve a high level of technical productivity, reliability, quality, and simplicity.
Project Execution: Drive projects and initiatives with excellent outcomes.
System Architecture: Work with the team to design and architect new systems, products, and features.
Engineering Standards: Uphold high engineering standards and bring consistency to codebases, infrastructure, and processes.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with product, design, support, and operations teams.
Engineering Culture: Create an engineering culture that inspires and helps people thrive in what they do.
Strategic Alignment: Understand the big picture and translate it to the team with a reflection on strategy.
Team Motivation: Inspire and motivate team members toward outstanding deliveries.

2. Engineering Manager Role Purpose

Business Alignment: Understand the mission of the business and how the team fits into the bigger picture.
User Advocacy: Work with engineering and customer support teams to advocate and advance user experience.
Talent Acquisition: Set and maintain a high bar for hiring new talent.
Process Improvement: Continually inspect the process and culture, looking for areas to improve.
Technical Leadership: Drive technical projects and provide leadership in an innovative and fast-paced environment.
Project Management: Take responsibility for the overall planning, execution, and success of complex technical projects
Product Collaboration: Work closely with the Product Management team to ensure we're building the best products.
Action-Oriented Mindset: Be the bias towards action in the room.
Customer Focus: Continually show co-workers that staying customer-focused and iterative will lead to the best results.
Quality Assurance: Responsible for the quality of the team's work.
On-Call Support: Ready to jump into the on-call rotation and iterate upon it to facilitate sustainability.
Hands-On Coding: Actively participate in coding.
Technical Strategy: Collaborate with other technical leaders and peers to develop the strategy for the team.
System Design: Design high-performance, scalable, and testable components for the architecture and execute its development.
Microservices Development: Lead a team to build new microservices, breaking away from an existing monolith.
Talent Development: Hire, mentor, and train senior software engineers and manage their OKRs.

3. Engineering Manager General Responsibilities

Mentorship: Guide and mentor the team every day
Software Development: Be in the trenches, coding and actively working with the team to develop solutions
Knowledge Sharing: Cross-pollinate, learn and disseminate knowledge from other teams, generously share expertise, and the team's expertise
Solution Design: Design and implement solutions while being mindful that these are business-critical solutions
Best Practices: Foster a culture of creating reliable products, using best coding practices, coding standards, unit testing, and integration testing
Team Management: Manage and oversee the engineering team in Vietnam
Hiring and Development: Responsible for hiring, mentoring, and developing a team of engineers to grow a high-performance engineering organization
Collaboration: Collaborate with product and technology teams to deliver major initiatives that drive customer growth
Technical Strategy: Guide engineering technical strategy and roadmaps
Code Quality: Commitment to high code quality and delivery requirements
Technical Leadership: Ensures the technical lead on the different projects
Customer Support: Provides support to customers and factories, aiming to win projects
Manufacturing Follow-up: In the sample phase of manufacturing, organizing a follow-up on the manufacturing site for the critical process
Supplier Knowledge: Ensure the knowledge and the update of the suppliers’ capabilities
KPI Management: Responsible for the KPI for the overall engineering activity
Continuous Improvement: Continuous improvement for the service provided to the customers, both internal and external

4. Engineering Manager Key Accountabilities

Talent Development: Recruit, coach, and develop engineers.
Leadership and Influence: Strive to influence team members to achieve their personal and work goals through clarity, trust, accountability, and empowerment.
Performance and Culture: Work closely with the VP of Technology to maintain high team performance and a strong culture.
Mentorship: Hold regular 1:1s with team members while providing coaching and mentorship focused on consistent improvement and career development.
Advocacy: Advocate for engineers to have the best tools and processes so they can do their best work.
Problem-Solving: Be reactive by helping coordinate solutions to problems raised by the team.
Engineering Initiatives: Contribute to engineering-wide initiatives as a member of Clair's engineering management team.
Culture Champion: Champion Clair's the cultural principles both within the team and across the organization.
Team Management: Manage a team of software engineers, including task planning and the code review process.
Technical Leadership: Drive technical projects and provide leadership in an innovative and fast-paced environment.
Project Execution: Be responsible for the overall planning, execution, and success of complete technical projects.
Product Collaboration: Work closely with the product management team to ensure we’re building the best product.
Career Development: Describe and monitor the right career path for each team member.
Skill Growth: Motivate and rotate the expertise of team members to leverage competency for others.

5. Engineering Manager Roles and Details

Technical Direction: Guide architecture, data structure, and codebase expansion.
Team Development: Foster technical and professional growth within the engineering team.
Product Architecture: Collaborate with product teams to design and build user-centric products.
Project Planning: Lead estimation, planning, and requirement analysis with stakeholders.
Scalability and Security: Ensure speed while maintaining security, scalability, and reliability.
Priority Management: Continuously communicate priorities to the engineering team.
Accountability: Scope projects effectively and hold the team accountable.
Feature Development: Work with a cross-functional team to identify and define features that address complex pain points for pet parents and enhance pet care education.
Cross-Team Collaboration: Partner with Software Engineering Leaders, Product Managers, Member Experience, and Digital Health teams to deliver impactful solutions.
Technical Oversight: Provide hands-on support, including code reviews and technical feedback.
Target Delivery: Ensure the delivery and reporting of VTS technical targets and the Statement of Intent (SoI) for a given product line.
Technical Goal Setting: Establish overall vehicle technical targets in collaboration with the Chief Programme Engineer.
Technical Facilitation: Lead and resolve technical discussions to drive solutions forward.
Stakeholder Communication: Maintain clear and effective communication with stakeholders and their teams.
Work Organization: Manage task distribution and workflow optimization.

6. Engineering Manager Responsibilities and Key Tasks

Software Development Ownership: Take over the responsibility for the software development of the team and the product they are building.
Team Leadership: Manage and lead a cross-functional team of engineers to architect, develop, deploy, and operate services in a service-oriented, micro-frontend environment.
Technical Guidance: Participate in deep technical discussions and provide direction for the team.
Industry Awareness: Actively learn and stay up-to-date with industry trends and developments.
Delivery Management: Ensure engineers are well-equipped and enabled to deliver high-quality software promptly while meeting operational SLAs.
Engineering Advocacy: Advocate and evangelize modern software engineering and organizational practices.
Culture Development: Grow a healthy, collaborative engineering culture in line with the company values.
Continuous Improvement: Constantly advocate and help evolve continuous improvement practices, technical, and operational excellence.
Team Mentorship: Lead, coach, and inspire eight software engineers in cross-functional teams.
Knowledge Sharing: Encourage a learning and knowledge-sharing environment while also considering the company’s needs.
Technical Communication: Teach team members how to explain technically complex situations to non-technical experts.
Collaboration Facilitation: Guide the teams through the development lifecycle and foster collaboration between engineers and other team members.
Developer Experience: Take ownership and design the developer experience so that teams can operate autonomously and with high agility.
Technology Innovation: Investigate and propose cutting-edge technologies to improve site reliability, developer experience, customer experience, and raw performance.
Process Optimization: Develop efficient processes, instill a sense of urgency, and motivate the team to operate with high velocity, ownership, and accountability.
Strategic Thinking: Think beyond the day-to-day and lead the team to elevate the art of e-commerce engineering.
Engineering Standards: Hold yourself and the team accountable to high engineering standards.

7. Engineering Manager Duties and Roles

Facility Maintenance: Monitor and manage the daily maintenance of the facility and equipment in line with quality and accreditation standards.
Project Management: Manage clinic and hospital expansion projects, including department alterations, fit-out, interior enhancements, and related construction, ensuring alignment with company standards.
Engineering Leadership: Lead and manage the engineering team.
Quality Compliance: Monitor and manage quality improvement standards and ensure compliance with accreditation standards, overseeing relevant audits.
Operations Management: Manage the daily operations of the department, including financial and budget management.
Preventative Maintenance: Implement preventative maintenance standards and guidelines to ensure optimal patient safety and prevent financial risk for the company.
Strategic Decision-Making: Make impactful decisions for the evolution of the product.
Product Design: Lead the work of designing the functionalities of the platform.
Hands-On Development: Collaborate hands-on in the development of the platform and problem-solving.
Product Collaboration: Interact with product and architect leadership to determine priorities and key feature decisions.
Project Planning: Organize the work of a team, developing timelines and roadmaps.
Team Mentorship: Mentor team members and help them express their full potential.
Technical Target Management: Develop and monitor achievement of overall vehicle technical targets, including Design, CAE, legal, and performance criteria.
Development Oversight: Chair meetings to review DVP, Virtual, and Physical Development status.
Milestone Reporting: Report Vehicle Attribute status to milestones and gateways.
Creative Problem-Solving: Generate creative ideas and design solutions to cross-functional problems while ensuring compatibility with the manufacturing strategy.
Issue Management: Field and document cross-functional technical issues to ensure integration and balance of all functions.

8. Engineering Manager Roles and Responsibilities

Product Qualification: Achieve Type Qualification for new products by agreed cost and life cycle objectives.
Design Documentation: Ensure design files are maintained for products under development, including required documentation and supporting engineering calculations to an appropriate standard.
Standards Compliance: Maintain an appropriate level of knowledge of design and qualification standards of products.
Performance Monitoring: Review information and reports to monitor the organization's overall effectiveness and its progress toward continuous improvement.
Product Development: Deliver robust, well-engineered products that meet current and anticipated customer requirements.
Team Development: Maintain a strong team through robust succession and development plans.
Training Management: Identify and implement suitable training for direct reports and development activities.
Career Planning: Ensure robust succession and career plans are in place.
Business Strategy: Contribute to the direction of the business as a member of the Redditch site leadership team and be responsible for the completion of any agreed actions for the engineering department.
Health and Safety Compliance: Ensure all direct reports maintain acceptable standards of conduct concerning health and safety at work.
Coaching and Support: Coach and support engineers and scientists through consistent feedback, navigation of challenges, and providing development opportunities to encourage technical and professional growth.
Technical Competency: Build competency in technology and work with subject matter experts to help build, communicate, and direct technical goals and plans.
Talent Acquisition: Recruit, interview, hire, and onboard new Silazens to expand the team’s capabilities and diversity.
Software Team Management: Manage a team of software engineers, including design and code review.

9. Engineering Manager Additional Details

Team Performance: Be accountable for the output quality/performance of the team, manage performance reviews, manage career and development of team members, and promote an innovation culture.
SDLC Compliance: Ensure the team follows SDLC best practices/standards like coding/security standards, code reviews, audit remediation, architecture/design reviews, and automation.
Technical Expertise: Demonstrate deep knowledge (hands-on) of technical development activities and processes.
Requirement Analysis: Understand business requirements and participate in grooming/planning.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with cross-functional agile teams, including product managers, customer support, QA engineers, and software developers.
Problem Solving: Identify optimal solutions to complex problems.
Project Breakdown: Break down complex projects into smaller tasks and provide reliable estimates.
Mentorship: Guide and mentor junior developers.
Sprint Management: Manage the sprint backlog and grooming process.
Issue Resolution: Debug and quickly resolve production or QA issues.
Sprint Leadership: Lead sprint stand-ups and act as the point person for cross-team communications and coordination.
Project Management: Manage needed projects and coordination between vendors, clients, and internal teams at each engagement.
Requirement Communication: Articulate client/internal/vendor requirements to the necessary parties and take ownership of this activity.
Cross-Team Coordination: Coordinate with other groups (support, sales, etc.) to plan for dependencies, needed engagement, and collaboration.
Best Practices Compliance: Ensure engineering best practices are followed and improved over time.
Strategic Alignment: Work with colleagues to identify opportunities or needs for alignment.

10. Engineering Manager Roles

Team Leadership: Provide guidance and leadership to team members.
Talent Development: Actively engage in the selection, training, and development of team members.
Goal Setting: Work with team members to set goals and development plans.
Performance Tracking: Actively track performance and identify and support training opportunities.
Metrics Management: Assist in establishing appropriate metrics to track and evaluate the performance of engineers.
Policy Compliance: Ensure adherence, implementation, and maintenance of policies and procedures.
Technical Standards: Develop and maintain technical standards and technical training manuals.
Collaboration: Work with Engineers, Modeling, Sales, Customers, and Manufacturing to solve complex technical, contract, and scheduling issues and assist in developing optimization and design strategies.
Design Quality: Responsible for the quality of designs and ensuring deliverables are high quality and delivered on time.
Design Review: Review and check designs for completeness, accuracy, manufacturing capabilities, and efficiency.
Continuous Improvement: Lead and/or support continuous improvement activities throughout the organization, both internally and externally (customer-centric).
Performance Metrics: Develop and track performance metrics.
Issue Resolution: Monitor job log issues assigned to engineering, track resulting solutions, collect data, and utilize findings in the continuous improvement program.
Project Risk Management: Identify potential project issues, collaborate with appropriate parties to develop mitigation actions, and report project status/issues and key actions to the Value Stream Leader.
Engineering Training: Develop and maintain a comprehensive training program for new and experienced engineers, covering all technical aspects of the product
Resource Planning: Assist in determining staffing and budget requirements.

11. Engineering Manager Tasks

Engineering and Maintenance Management: Manage engineering and maintenance functions/personnel.
Process Improvement: Develop new or improved methods/processes to increase production efficiency, product quality, and customer satisfaction.
New Product Launch: Manage all new product launch activities, including quoting, process development, capital expenditure requests, safety reviews, phase reviews, and release to production.
Engineering Standards: Develop, implement, and maintain engineering standards and specifications to ensure product quality meets customer requirements.
Cross-Department Communication: Maintain effective communications with operations, quality, materials, and maintenance departments.
Technical Expertise: Maintain a strong knowledge of all aspects of engineering.
Talent Management: Select, train, and motivate a staff capable of effectively achieving objectives.
Customer Needs Assessment: Assess and understand the technical needs of customers.
Role Definition: Clarify and define the various tech roles that customers need to staff.
Talent Staffing: Ensure engagements are successfully staffed with the best-fitting talents by closely collaborating with the talent team.
Candidate Assessment: Assess potential candidates for job fit, run matching calls, and/or conduct technical interviews.
Team Formation: Support the formation of fully managed teams alongside talent specialists.
Technical Scoping: Run technical scoping to identify the needed tech stack and ideal team setup for new products.
Customer Advisory: Act as a sparring partner for customers, especially around building and scaling products and teams.
Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of high-performing software engineers.
Feature Ownership: Own the feature releases according to the company's vision and mission.

12. Engineering Manager Details and Accountabilities

Team Development: Create a high-performing and highly engaged team of world-class engineers.
Product and Infrastructure Leadership: Lead the team responsible for managing product and infrastructure to support live customers while continuously developing and innovating the product.
Stakeholder Management: Collaborate with Product, Design, and Business stakeholders to align technical and business goals.
Technical Decision-Making: Help drive technical decisions around tools including Ansible, Docker, Terraform, Azure, AWS, Scala, Kotlin, Python, and JavaScript/React.
Cross-Department Collaboration: Manage and develop relationships across departments with stakeholders.
Risk Assessment: Work closely with the codebase and make educated decisions on technical risks.
Talent Acquisition: Have full ownership of attracting best-in-class engineering talent.
Process Improvement: Lead business results improvement via the Focused Improvement Process, including Analysis, Definition, Design, Implementation, and Capability Maintenance.
Work Process Standardization: Document process changes in standard SDC format while collaborating with key contacts across Logistics Engineering, IT, Security, QA, and other PD operations support organizations.
Project Leadership: Lead new customization and internal projects.
Compliance and Assessment: Lead CSA (mandated or business elective CSA) every two years.
Digital Self-Assessment: Lead Digital MAGICS self-assessment across five control areas (IM, FAM, OGC, P2P, and 3PG) every quarter.
Performance Accountability: Drive accountability through site/regional scorecards and review processes.
Success Ownership: Own success criteria for the team.
User-Centered Decision Making: Decide what needs to be shipped with end users in mind.
Technical Support: Help unblock the team when facing technical issues, with a working knowledge of React, Node.js, TypeScript, and Kubernetes.

13. Engineering Manager Job Description

Process Development: Develop, maintain, and modify engineering processes and procedures in response to technical developments and operational needs.
Problem Solving: Carry out investigations into operational problems or developments and prepare solutions, individually or as a member of a project team.
Business Support: Support the identification of business opportunities and the preparation of bids in areas of expertise.
Stakeholder Management: Act as the main point of contact with customers and suppliers in assigned areas of engineering matters to resolve complex problems and issues, and maintain awareness of priorities and objectives.
Team Mentorship: Provide help and direction to less experienced team members to support their effective work and development.
Budget Management: Manage assigned budgets and lead, develop, and motivate assigned employees to ensure they are aware of and capable of delivering their accountabilities.
Decision Making: Make engineering decisions within own sphere of responsibility and delegated authority.
Technical Development: Keep up to date in relevant technical areas and develop skills and capabilities to provide more effective services and supply technical support and expertise to others.
Engineering Delivery: Deliver on time and on budget a package of engineering in the form of system calculations, diagrams, technical reports, specifications, and drawings.
Design Review: Provide guidance and review of engineering designs.
Process Improvement: Recommend and assist with the development and implementation of process improvement, efficiency tools, and overall strategy.
Team Leadership: Lead and motivate the team to provide exceptional engineering and customer service.
Mentorship: Mentor and coach all team members.
Project Management: Lead projects, manage risk, and resolve project challenges.

14. Engineering Manager Functions

Team Leadership: Leading, coaching, mentoring, and encouraging a dedicated team of software engineers to architect, build, deploy, and support best-in-class software services that are always available to provide the best experience for the customers.
Team Development: Building and developing high-energy, committed, motivated engineering teams focusing on innovation, engineering, and operational excellence to deliver exceptional business results.
DevOps Support: Working with and supporting the teams to develop DevOps capabilities and achieve a step change in performance through innovation.
Team Structuring: Define and maintain the best team structures, aligned to a culture of “small autonomous agile teams.”
Engineering Best Practices: Promote and prioritize engineering standard methodology (the “how” of achieving the business goal) across all engineering teams, with a clear direction for improvement.
Quality and Improvement: Champion Quality and Continuous Improvement.
Career Development: Support the professional goals and development opportunities for the engineering team.
Coaching and Mentorship: Provide coaching (internal and external development opportunities, mentoring, one-on-ones) to keep everyone on their desired career trajectory.
Training Management: Plan and execute (or secure) relevant training for the team.
Technical Leadership: Drive high-priority technical projects and provide leadership in a fast-paced environment.
Engineering Culture: Create a strong engineering culture through code review standards, sprint and release planning, and SDLC design.
System Expertise: Be an expert in a component-level and systems-level view of the SevenRooms architecture.
Architecture Review: Assist in architecture review and analysis.
Values and Competencies: Model the organization’s values and perform according to the organization's competencies.
Process Improvement: Establish or improve upon systems for efficient and productive discussion of ideas, decision-making, and information sharing.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Facilitate cross-functional collaboration within the Battery Engineering team and with internal stakeholders at Sila.
Vision and Values: Invest in the company values and vision and champion them.

15. Engineering Manager Job Summary

Team Leadership: Lead and manage electrical engineers who work on cross-functional teams to design, develop, and support embedded systems-based medical devices by providing career development and coaching, defining individual and team goals, and maintaining performance-based goals.
Resource Planning: Develop workforce and resource assessments for the annual operating plan and forward-looking strategic plans to ensure that the EE group is structured, resourced, trained, and staffed to meet needs.
Staffing Collaboration: Collaborate within product development to effectively staff product development teams.
Technical Supervision: Supervise and support electrical engineering technicians who provide associated development laboratory services.
Equipment and Tools Management: Evaluate and make recommendations for tools, equipment, facility upgrades, testing services, and/or other capital investments to ensure the EE team is equipped and stays current with industry best practices.
Business Development Support: Assist Business Development by meeting with potential new customers and providing input and support on proposals.
Technical Communication: Communicate technical information to non-technical stakeholders and customers while evaluating ongoing customer needs and expectations along with technology advancements.
Deliverable Management: Ensure engineering deliverables are met with timeliness, budget adherence, and quality.
Cost Management: Help create and oversee project estimates and engage in cost management strategies.
Process and Product Improvement: Lead teams in the development of best-in-class processes and product design by continuously improving and ensuring those processes meet quality and safety compliance guidelines.
Efficiency and Sustainability: Strive to improve the efficiency and sustainability of processes and product designs.
Design Compliance: Ensure compliant, manufacturable, testable, and cost-effective designs.
Technical Standards: Establish technical standards in reviews, documentation, and designs.
Best Practices Compliance: Comply with all professional departmental as well as company best practices.

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