Software Engineering Manager

The Software Engineering Manager leads a team of engineers building Picarro’s cloud software, data platform, and AI-agentic product engineering capabilities. This is a hybrid technical and people-leadership role, expected to stay close to architecture and technical decisions-not just manage process-while building and growing a high-ownership engineering team. Responsibilities

• Manage and grow a team of product/software engineers, and potentially mobile engineers, including hiring, mentorship, and career development.
• Set technical direction jointly with senior ICs for the team’s systems, including architecture reviews, major design decisions, and technical tradeoffs.
• Champion and evolve the team’s product-engineering-driven, AI-assisted development practices, including prototype-first development, fast iteration, and engineers owning production reliability.
• Own delivery by translating business and product priorities into a realistic roadmap, and be accountable for the team shipping and operating what it builds.
• Partner cross-functionally with product management, hardware/domain experts, and other engineering teams to align priorities.
• Maintain enough hands-on technical depth to make credible architecture and hiring decisions; this is not a purely process-oriented PM role.
• Drive a healthy on-call and reliability culture where the team owns what it ships in production, not just at merge time., We are the world’s leader in timely, trusted, and actionable data using enhanced optical spectroscopy. Our solutions are used in a wide variety of applications, including natural gas leak detection, ethylene oxide emissions monitoring, semiconductor fabrication, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, atmospheric science, air quality, greenhouse gas measurements, food safety, hydrology, ecology, and more. Our software and hardware are designed and manufactured in Santa Clara, California and are used in over 90 countries worldwide based on over 65 patents related to cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) technology and are unparalleled in their precision, ease of use, and reliability.

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years directly managing engineers.
• Demonstrated technical credibility, with the ability to review a design document or dig into an incident-not just run standups.
• Experience building or scaling data-intensive or cloud platform systems.
• Experience integrating AI-assisted engineering practices into a team’s workflow, including tooling adoption beyond individual use.
• Strong track record of hiring and developing engineers.
• Personal background building software as a core product-at a software product company, R&D lab, or technology-first organization-rather than internal IT, retail/e-commerce technology operations, or IT services/consulting shops that primarily implement or customize other companies’ software.

Nice to Have

• A public GitHub or similar portfolio showcasing personal or past project work is a strong plus.
• Experience managing both backend/platform and mobile engineers.
• Background in IoT, sensor data, or a regulated or hardware-adjacent industry.
• Experience scaling a team through significant headcount or scope growth.

The base salary range for this full-time position is $200K to $215K. Our total compensation packages includes base salary, bonus eligibility, and equity. Your base salary range and title will be determined based on the location, experience, qualification, skills, knowledge, level, and pay of employees in similar positions.

We offer a comprehensive benefit package including:

• Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and Health Savings Account (HSA) plans
• Life, Short-Term Disability, and Long-Term Disability Insurance
• Paid Time Off and Paid Holidays
• Employee Referral Program
• 401K
• Social events (summer picnic, holiday party, team lunches, etc.)
• On-site Health & Wellness programs (fitness challenges, outdoor bootcamp, flu-shots, etc.)