About Kriyadocs
Kriyadocs is a SaaS platform purpose-built for the scholarly publishing domain. We work with some of the world's leading academic publishers and societies, powering their end-to-end publishing workflows - from manuscript submission through editorial review, production, typesetting, and final delivery.
We are restructuring our engineering organisation around three stream-aligned squads, each owning a distinct domain of the platform end to end. The Engineering Manager is the person who makes this model work - building the team, enabling the leads, and ensuring delivery without becoming the bottleneck.
The Role
We are looking for an Engineering Manager to own the day-to-day engineering organisation at Kriyadocs. You will report directly to the VP of Engineering and manage three Squad Leads and fourteen Engineers across three stream-aligned squads - Ingestion and Authoring, Production and Publishing, and Platform and Insights.
This is a people-first engineering management role. You will be expected to be technically credible, deeply involved in the team's growth and delivery, and capable of operating independently with minimal hand-holding from the VP.
What You Will Own
- People management - manage three Squad Leads directly; provide regular 1:1s, performance feedback, career development, and clear role expectations across the engineering organisation.
- Delivery accountability - own the engineering team's delivery commitments; work with Squad Leads to ensure sprint goals are met, blockers are resolved, and timelines are communicated proactively.
- Squad health and effectiveness - monitor squad velocity, team morale, and collaboration patterns; intervene early when squads are struggling and celebrate when they are excelling.
- Hiring and onboarding - partner with the VP to recruit senior engineers and squad leads; own the onboarding experience for new engineering hires.
- Technical direction partnership - work closely with the Staff Engineer on architecture decisions that affect multiple squads; ensure engineering teams have the technical clarity they need to execute.
- Engineering culture - model and reinforce a culture of ownership, quality, and continuous improvement; champion engineering best practices across the organisation.
- Cross-functional collaboration - represent Engineering in conversations with Product, QA, DevOps, and the Sr. Program Manager; ensure alignment on priorities and dependencies.
- Escalation handling - act as the first escalation point for engineering delivery issues; resolve conflicts within and between squads before they reach the VP.
What We Are Looking For
- 8 - 12 years of software engineering experience with at least 2 - 3 years in an engineering management or team lead role.
- Proven experience managing multiple teams or squads simultaneously in a product engineering environment.
- Strong technical foundation - you have been a hands-on engineer and can engage credibly in architecture discussions, code reviews, and technical trade-off conversations.
- Excellent people skills - you know how to build trust, give hard feedback constructively, and develop engineers at different levels and experience ranges.
- Delivery-oriented mindset - you are accountable for outcomes, not just effort; you hold teams to commitments while maintaining a sustainable pace.
- Experience working in Agile and squad-based delivery models - familiarity with stream-aligned team structures is a strong plus.
- Strong communication skills - you can represent Engineering clearly to Product, clients, and leadership; you write well and run focused, productive meetings.
- High resilience and composure - you stay calm under pressure, make good decisions with incomplete information, and keep the team focused when things get difficult.
Nice to Have
- Experience in scholarly publishing, academic content platforms, or document workflow SaaS.
- Familiarity with Node.js / TypeScript full-stack engineering environments.
- Prior experience managing teams through a significant technical transformation or platform re-architecture.
- Exposure to AI-assisted engineering tools and practices.