What is an Engineering Manager? – Amy Phillips

Engineering management is a discipline and role that has been growing in maturity over recent years, now almost all but the smallest tech teams will have an Engineering Manager there to manage and grow engineers.

A typical Engineering Manager will have a technical background and be actively looking to move into people management, they’ll mostly concern themselves with hiring and growing engineers but may, or may not also be writing code, introducing ways of working, conducting code reviews, leading on architecture, ensuring delivery, setting the strategy and pretty much everything in between.

To help with job hunting and meeting role expectations I think about the variety of Engineering Management elements as being grouped into four distinct styles based on time and energy spent on each of the primary responsibilities – Code (writing, and reviewing), Architecture (designing and setting technical direction), People (hiring, managing, growing), Team health (ways of working, productivity, happiness), and Product strategy (what to build and when).