Engineering Manager

Swoop Technologies’s mission is to make the physical world accessible to innovation. We are building a distributed operating system, SwoopOS, that decomposes the world’s equipment into a distributed robotic embodiment upon which a new generation of distributed systems, autonomous systems, and agentic AI can be built and deployed using our SDK, Valhalla, and operated via our browser, Surf. Imagine the world’s equipment - consisting of the electrical grid, communications architectures, manufacturing facilities, and militaries as a trapped supply of inputs possessing the potential to ensure Western military advantage, sovereign control of economically competitive manufacturing capacity, or the creation of a grid that fosters energy dominance. Swoop is liberating these trapped assets, allowing them to contribute to the world’s future as a series of building blocks to be combined at the speed of software, limited by only the hard constraints of physics and the soft constraints of safety. That is what Swoop is building. Not in the data center or cloud or edge on-premise computing node. In the physical world. This is a hybrid position that requires someone based in Minneapolis/St. Paul who can work in-office 3+ days per week

Your Impact:

We believe our team members are our greatest asset, and as such, are seeking a passionate engineering leader to manage engineers across product engineering. These teams are instrumental in building our platform that allows customers to access critical information about their systems and environment, share discoveries, and solve their most challenging real-world problems.

What does impact look like as an engineering leader here? Priority one is the impact you’ll have mentoring and growing team members. You view management not just as a career step for advancement, but rather, as an opportunity to nurture and develop talent. You hold the belief that good managers enhance their teams by looking for ways to improve individual's skills, guide problem solving so that team members come to the right solution on their own, identify personal growth opportunities, remove roadblocks, and aren’t afraid to dive into technical work when needed.

You will seek ways to enhance processes and increase efficiencies, while setting and maintaining high standards for your team. You will communicate our vision and how it integrates into the engineering roadmap, while maintaining technical oversight of engineering and design documentation. Your genuine passion for management, combined with your technical expertise, will have a lasting impact on Swoop and, most importantly, on your team.

What You’ll Do:

• Provide feedback on designs, product features, and technical specifications to help team members identify ways to improve quality. Coach IC’s to reach the right outcomes, so that consistent improvements are made
• Develop engineers capable of managing large, ambiguous projects independently and successfully, with minimal oversight. They will still request help when necessary, but they will lead the process
• Conduct regular 1:1’s and annual performance and development reviews; set 6-month individual goals and expectations for team members
• Maintain high standards for engineering and product development, while not shying away from providing feedback to team members (both praise and improvements)
• Communicate effectively changes at the team and organization level, in addition to successfully conveying the company vision and how it translates to our development roadmap
• Maintain awareness and accountability of your teams domain, and effectively work with cross functional team members (Engineering, Business, PgM’s, etc.) through successful full cycle product and feature launches
• Ensure technical design and engineering documentation remains current, as well as quarterly release notes
• Ensure engineering deadlines are met. Be proactive in communicating to the appropriate stakeholders any changes to the timeline and why
• Stay technical - Provide design and code reviews, and, when time permits, write some yourself. This could take the shape of enhanced test coverage, automation, or other areas where utilizing your technical expertise enhances design and engineering processes at Swoop

• 7+ years of full-time embedded engineering and/or full-stack development
• 2+ years of prior management experience
• Strong technical experience with multiple of the following: C, Rust, Python, Operating System/Kernel development, RTOS, Embedded Systems/Firmware design, Microkernel development, Bare Metal development, Backend development, Kubernetes
• Strong collaboration, verbal, and written communication skills that have been used to translate company vision, technical roadmaps, technical documentation, interactions with stakeholders, and team goals and alignment
• Track record of mentoring and leading high performing teams to successfully deliver on large scale projects
• The desire to stay technical in order to leverage your expertise to solve problems
• The characteristics of being a reliable self-starter, operating with speed and urgency, organized, efficient, and strong attention to detail

• Previous management experience leading distributed team members
• Experience recruiting, interviewing, and hiring high performing members into your team