The Role
The Engineering Manager will lead a team of 7-15 engineers, ensuring high-quality software delivery, team growth, and effective project management in a fast-paced environment.
Summary Generated by Built In
About the Role
What are we doing?
Who are we?
Key Responsibilities
Required Qualifications
Preferred Qualifications
Why you'll love working with us
All are Welcome.
Compensation
We're seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead one of the development teams driving Cadstrom's mission to make bug- and revision-free circuits a reality. We move fast — the product is shipping, customers are live, and every week matters. You'll be responsible for the health, velocity, and craft of a team of 7–15 developers spanning full-stack, frontend, backend, and platform work — making sure they're aimed at the right problems, set up to succeed, and growing as engineers.
This is a people-first leadership role with a strong technical voice. You won't be expected to ship code, but you will be expected to engage deeply in architecture reviews, push back on shaky designs, and help your team make sound technical bets. If you've shipped web services at scale, have opinions about what good service architecture looks like, and find genuine satisfaction in building high-performance engineering teams, we want to talk to you.
This is a high-ownership role. We're looking for a leader who treats Cadstrom's outcome as their own, brings real intensity to the work, and helps the team do the same — sustainably.
We are accelerating the world's hardware ingenuity by blending generative AI, ML, and novel deterministic approaches to electronics simulation and validation. We're providing our enthusiastic customers intelligent and automated access to the most advanced validation tools to eliminate respins – helping engineers of all levels deliver their designs faster, cheaper, and with less waste.
We are a small team of innovators who are passionate about fundamentally improving how electrical engineers deliver electronics with higher confidence. We are backed by Bison Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, and the Allen Institute for AI's Incubator. Our distinguished founders are responsible for creating the largest product development firm in the US, and building Azure Quantum (and more!) at Microsoft. We know you'll be in good company.
- Lead a team of 8–15 engineers spanning full-stack, frontend, backend, and platform work — owning the team's delivery, quality, and morale.
- Build a high-performance engineering culture rooted in ownership, craft, candid feedback, and shared accountability. Set the bar for what "good" looks like and hold the team to it.
- Make sure the team is used effectively — match people to problems thoughtfully, remove blockers quickly, and protect focus so engineers can do their best work.
- Drive operational excellence in how the team plans, ships, and supports its software: sprint/iteration rhythm, code review standards, on-call practices, incident response, and post-mortem discipline.
- Provide strong technical guidance during architecture reviews, design discussions, and trade-off conversations — even though you won't be writing code yourself. Push back where it matters and unblock when the team is stuck.
- Partner cross-functionally with Operations, AI/ML, electrical engineering domain experts, and other engineering leaders to align roadmap, dependencies, and customer commitments.
- Grow the team — recruit, interview, onboard, and retain engineers. Coach engineers across the spectrum from new hires to staff-level ICs, and develop the next generation of tech leads.
- Run performance management with care and clarity — set expectations, give regular feedback, deliver reviews, and make tough calls when the team's standards aren't being met.
- Adapt to evolving project needs and take on various roles as required in a startup environment — including reshaping team structure as the company grows.
- 3+ years of direct people-management experience leading software engineering teams of at least 5 engineers, with proven success scaling teams.
- Track record of leading teams that span full-stack web development — frontend, backend, and/or platform — and a clear understanding of how to allocate work across that surface area.
- Hands-on background as a software engineer earlier in your career, with experience shipping production web services on a major cloud (e.g. AWS).
- Knowledge of service architecture: API design, service boundaries, observability, reliability, deployment practices, and the operational realities of running web services in production.
- Demonstrated success building a high-performance team culture — including how you've raised the bar on code quality, technical rigor, and team velocity.
- Excellent written and verbal communication — able to clearly convey trade-offs, expectations, and decisions to engineers, peers, and leadership.
- Experience hiring strong engineering candidates at all levels and running a thoughtful interview process.
- Experience managing a team that included frontend (React or similar) and Node.js/TypeScript backend engineers.
- Familiarity with AI/ML systems — what it takes to ship them, evaluate them, and operate them in production.
- Experience working in a high-growth startup environment where team structure and priorities shift frequently.
- Familiarity with the realities of supporting enterprise customers (SLAs, SOC2 compliance).
- Experience working with cross-functional partners in complex technical domains (hardware, EDA, scientific computing, etc.).
- Background contributing to or operating engineering organizations of 30+ engineers — bringing patterns and instincts from larger teams without forcing process the team doesn't need.
Personal Qualities
- People-first leader. You get genuine satisfaction from seeing engineers grow, and you measure your success through your team's success.
- High-trust, high-candor. You give direct feedback with care, and you build the kind of psychological safety where engineers tell you when something is off.
- Strong technical voice without ego. You can hold your own in a design review and push back where it matters — but you don't need to be the smartest person in the room.
- Bias to action with high ownership. You don't wait for perfect information; you make calls with what you have and adjust - treating Cadstrom’s outcome as your own.
- Strategic thinker. You balance shipping today's roadmap with investing in the team's long-term capability.
- Calm in ambiguity. Startups change fast; you can create clarity for your team when the picture is fuzzy.
- Self-aware and coachable. You actively seek feedback on your own management and grow from it.
- Embraces the ethos of "We, not I."
We're looking for candidates who can demonstrate practical experience in most of these areas. If you're excited about building a world-class engineering team, comfortable with the pace and ambiguity of a startup, and energized by applying your craft to electrical engineering problems, we want to hear from you!
- Early Stage Equity Package – We want owners, not employees. You'll receive meaningful early-stage equity in a high-growth company, because we want you to share in what we build.
- Impact – You'll have the chance to make a significant impact not only for our customers, but on how the industry as a whole approaches test and validation.
- Care – we believe strongly in caring for each other. We encourage our people to bring their whole selves to work, support each other, and ensure they are happy in and out of the workplace.
- Leading benefits - we invest deeply in the health and wellbeing of our team with leading startup benefits, 0% copay across the board, and a $2k/year HSA.
- World-Class Backers – Cadstrom is backed by world-class investors: Bison Ventures (Bill Gates), Innovation Endeavors (Eric Schmidt), and the Allen Institute for AI (Paul Allen).
We are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive environment. We are actively working to create an environment of mutual respect where equal opportunities are available to all employees without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We believe that diversity and inclusion among our founders and employees are critical to the success of our company.
The base pay range for this role is CA$180,000 – CA$210,000 per year.
Skills Required
- 3+ years of direct people-management experience leading software engineering teams of at least 5 engineers
- Track record of leading teams that span full-stack web development
- Hands-on background as a software engineer with experience shipping production web services
- Knowledge of service architecture and operational practices for running web services
- Demonstrated success building a high-performance team culture
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Experience hiring engineering candidates and running a thoughtful interview process
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The Company
What We Do
Cadstrom provides automated PCB validation services to help engineering teams catch design errors before fabrication, preventing costly respins and saving significant time. Their solution is built by engineers for engineers, focusing on deterministic validation and IP security.
