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Job Description : Engineering Manager, Developer Platform &
Summary :
The Engineering Manager for Developer Platform &
- Developer Experience leads a small, high-impact team of engineers responsible for the internal developer platform and developer experience initiatives at isolved. This is a hands-on player-coach role - the successful candidate will spend a meaningful portion of their time writing code, designing architecture, and contributing technically alongside their team, while also providing leadership, owning the roadmap, managing performance, and growing engineers.
This role sits at the intersection of two related disciplines : the Developer Platform (IDP, IaC libraries, CI/CD, shared tooling) and Developer Experience (productivity measurement, AI tooling adoption, paved roads, developer onboarding). The manager will set strategic direction across both, prioritize investments based on developer impact, partner with Application Architecture and engineering leadership to align with the broader technology roadmap, and ensure their team delivers measurable improvements in developer velocity, satisfaction, and quality.
Core Job Duties :
Leadership &
- People Management :
- Directly managing a small team of engineers across Developer Platform and Developer Experience disciplines
- Conducting 1 : 1s, performance reviews, career development planning, and coaching to help engineers grow
- Hiring, onboarding, and building a high-performing, low-ego team
- Setting clear expectations, providing direct feedback, and addressing performance issues constructively
Roadmap &
- Strategy :
- Owning the combined roadmap for Developer Platform and Developer Experience initiatives, balancing investments across IDP, IaC, CI/CD, observability, AI tooling, and productivity measurement
- Translating organizational goals (such as AI adoption, PR cycle time, deployment frequency, getDX scores) into concrete team deliverables
- Partnering with the Director of Application Architecture, application engineering leaders, and product partners to align platform investments with business outcomes
- Communicating roadmap, progress, and tradeoffs clearly to engineering leadership, peer managers, and platform consumers
Hands-On Technical Contribution :
- Contributing as an individual engineer on platform and DX initiatives - writing code, reviewing PRs, designing architecture, and pairing with team members
- Authoring or reviewing architecture decision records (ADRs) for platform capabilities
- Stepping into critical incidents, complex debugging, or technically demanding work when team capacity or expertise requires it
- Maintaining sufficient technical depth to make sound architectural judgments across the teams domains
Platform &
- DX Delivery :
- Ensuring the team delivers on Internal Developer Platform (Backstage) capabilities, Terraform module libraries, CI/CD pipelines, and shared developer tooling
- Driving adoption and effectiveness of AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code and others) across the engineering organization
- Establishing measurement frameworks (DORA, DX Core 4, getDX) and using data to guide investment decisions
- Championing paved roads, golden paths, and self-service workflows that reduce cognitive load for application teams
Cross-Team Collaboration :
- Partnering with Application Architecture, security, and product engineering teams to ensure platform offerings meet real needs
- Running office hours, demos, and enablement sessions that promote platform adoption and AI tool effectiveness
- Representing the team in architecture reviews, technology decision forums, and senior leadership updates
Job Complexity :
As a player-coach manager, balances hands-on engineering contribution with leadership responsibilities across two related but distinct disciplines. Uses deep technical expertise and organizational judgment to set direction, prioritize investments, and develop engineers, while continuing to contribute code and architecture. Anticipates how changes in AI tooling, platform engineering practices, and developer productivity research create new opportunities, and proactively evolves the teams strategy to keep isolved at the leading edge of developer experience.
Experience :
Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related engineering experience, including at least 2 years of formal people management or tech lead experience, with a Bachelors degree.
Minimum Qualifications :
- 8 years of professional software engineering experience
- 2 years managing engineers directly, or equivalent tech lead experience with documented people-development responsibilities
- Demonstrated ability to lead while remaining hands-on - willingness and ability to contribute as an individual engineer alongside the team
- Experience owning a technical roadmap and delivering against it
- Ability to work independently to research and solve complex problems
Strong skills in :
- C# / .NET
- Azure
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or equivalent)
- CI/CD pipeline design (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or equivalent)
- Architecture and technical decision-making at the team or platform level
- People leadership, coaching, and performance management
Experience with :
- Internal Developer Platforms (Backstage or equivalent)
- Developer productivity measurement (DORA, DX Core 4, SPACE, or similar frameworks)
- AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) and driving their adoption
- Python for scripting, automation, and platform tooling
- Azure PaaS services (Container Apps, Functions, Service Bus, Key Vault, APIM)
- Docker and containerization
- Microservice architecture and distributed systems
- Setting OKRs or similar goal-setting frameworks and reporting against them
- Hiring engineers and building teams
Experience with the following a plus :
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) and agentic developer workflows
- Observability platforms (OpenTelemetry, Application Insights, Datadog, or similar)
- Security tooling integration (GitHub Advanced Security, SonarQube, or similar)
- Leading a transition from one CI/CD platform to another (Azure DevOps to GitHub, or similar)
- Public speaking, internal evangelism, or external technical thought leadership
- Contributing to or maintaining open-source platform tooling
About isolved :
isolved is a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) solutions that combines modern technology with expert services and support. Purpose-built for People Heroes, isolved gives HR, payroll and benefits leaders the tools and insights to streamline operations and deliver employee experiences that matter. isolved People Cloud is a connected HCM platform with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics that brings together HR, payroll, benefits, workforce management and talent management in one experience. Built on a legacy of 40 years in the market, isolved is trusted by more than 200,000 employers and used by 9 million U.S. employees, representing about one in 20 American workers.
Visit www.isolvedhcm.com.
Isolved