Engineering Manager

Job Description

1 big thing: Axios is a growth-focused media company dedicated to helping people get smarter, faster on what matters. As we continue to scale our technology and platforms, this role ensures our engineering teams can effectively adopt, build, and operate modern tools that support that growth.

Why it matters: At Axios, we deliver news that's clinical, trustworthy, and informative, reaching millions of readers every day. As an Engineering Manager, you'll shape both the technical direction and execution of our platforms. This is a player-coach role – you stay close to the work, contribute where it counts, and make the team faster by removing friction, not adding it.

Responsibilities:

As an Engineering Manager at Axios, you'll lead a team of engineers while staying close to the technical work. You'll be responsible for:

• Technical leadership & contribution: Stay close to the code and architecture. Contribute directly when it unblocks the team, resolves complexity, or accelerates a critical path – not to gatekeep.
• Execution & delivery: Drive high-quality, timely delivery by making decisions quickly, clearing obstacles, and ensuring the team has what they need to ship without waiting on you.
• Mentorship & team development: Coach engineers through direct 1:1 feedback, career guidance, and hands-on pairing. Raise the bar on ownership so the team increasingly solves problems without escalation.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Partner with Product, Design, and stakeholders to bring clarity to priorities and translate them into effective execution. Be the person who makes alignment easy, not another layer of indirection.
• Code quality & reliability: Establish and uphold best practices for code quality, testing, and system reliability to ensure maintainable and scalable systems.
• Agentic workflows & AI fluency: Leverage and evolve agentic workflows and AI-assisted development practices to improve team productivity, accelerate delivery, and enhance engineering quality.
• Focus & prioritization: Protect the team's time. Say no to low-value work, reduce ambiguity, and keep everyone pointed at what actually moves the business forward.
• Operational excellence: Identify and remove blockers, improve team processes, and continuously increase velocity, ownership, and effectiveness.

Skills:

Ideal candidates are hands-on engineering leaders who care deeply about building high-quality products, developing strong teams, and driving meaningful outcomes, and bring the following skills:

• 3–7 years of experience leading engineering teams, with a strong background in backend or full-stack web development.
• A strong engineering foundation. You can contribute meaningfully to production code, not just review or direct it. Your technical credibility earns trust.
• Player-coach instincts. Leadership through context, not contribution. You lead by staying close to the work, and understand the technical landscape, anticipating friction, and equip the team to move fast.
• An unblocker mindset with product instinct. You default to enabling autonomy, make decisions visible, and share context proactively. You think like a product partner, identifying the highest-impact work and connecting engineering effort to business outcomes.
• AI fluency. You actively use AI-assisted development tools and agentic workflows, and you push the team to do the same.
• System design judgment. You make pragmatic architectural calls that balance speed, scalability, and long-term maintainability.
• Coaching that raises the bar. You help engineers grow through honest feedback, high standards, and increasing responsibility.
• Clear, decisive communication. You simplify complex problems, make tradeoffs explicit, and keep teams and stakeholders aligned without overcomplicating things.

We’ll be even more excited if you have:

• Experience coaching engineers through the transition from IC to tech lead, or from mid-level to senior.
• Experience leading in a pod or squad model where your team owns a surface area end-to-end and you're accountable for outcomes, not just execution.
• Familiarity with content platforms, API-driven architectures, or consumer-facing systems that operate at scale.
• Proven track record of taking ideas to delivery using the PDLC and user testing

What success looks like:

• The team moves faster because of you, not despite you. You're embedded in the work providing context, direction, and hands-on support, and the team rarely waits on decisions, approvals, or information.
• Engineers grow in ownership and impact. Over time, more problems get solved without escalation because you've coached the team to operate with confidence and accountability.
• Systems stay healthy. The codebase is maintainable and reliable, with thoughtful improvements that prevent future slowdowns.
• Product and Design trust the team. Execution is consistent, communication is clear, and there are no surprises.
• AI is a force multiplier. Agentic workflows and AI-assisted development are deeply integrated into how the team builds and ships.
• You sharpen the team's focus. The team ships against outcomes, not tasks. You connect engineering priorities to product and business goals and push back on work that doesn't move the needle.

Starting salary for this role is in the range of $185,000 - $220,000 and is dependent on numerous factors, including but not limited to location, work experience, and skills. This range does not include other compensation benefits. Axios' compensation philosophy takes into account the cost of labor differentials across the country. Because this is a remote-optional job posting, this salary range takes into account all possible locations within the United States, but candidates will only be eligible for the salary range for their location.

Axios is committed to embracing artificial intelligence as a core part of how we work. All team members are expected to actively develop AI literacy and use AI tools to enhance their productivity, creativity, and efficiency. We invest in ongoing learning to ensure every employee is equipped to responsibly and effectively integrate AI into their daily workflows.

What Axios brings to the table besides salary:

• 401(k) with employer match
• Robust PPO and High Deductible health insurance options on the Blue Cross Blue Shield network
• Employer Health Savings Account (HSA) contribution for the high deductible health plan option
• Dental and vision coverage
• Primary caregiver 12-week paid leave
• Birth-givers will have an additional 6-8 weeks depending on type of delivery, for a total of 18-20 weeks continuous leave
• Generous vacation policy, plus holidays
• One mental health day per quarter
• Annual learning and development stipend
• $100 monthly work-from-home stipend
• Tele-mental health services through Headspace
• OneMedical membership, including tele-health services
• Personal health advocacy resources through HealthAdvocate
• Inclusive fertility, hormonal health and family forming benefits through Carrot Fertility
• Access to the Axios “Family Fund”, which was created to allow employees to request financial support when facing financial hardship or emergencies
• Increased work flexibility for parents and caretakers
• Virtual company-sponsored social events
• A strong and positive work environment
• A commitment to an open, inclusive, and diverse work culture

Equal Opportunity Employer Statement

Axios is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.

This policy applies to all employment practices within our organization, including hiring, recruiting, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, leave of absence, compensation, benefits, training, and apprenticeship. Axios makes hiring decisions based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs at the time.