Engineering Manager - Employee Spend

About this role

ABOUT PLEO

Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike - with a vision to help all businesses ‘go beyond’.

The word ‘Pleo’ actually means ‘more than you’d expect’, and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years.

Now, we’re at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can’t say we’ve got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that’s half the fun! What we can say is that we’re a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Joining our team as an Engineering Manager places you at the forefront of advancing our technical excellence and innovation. You will be part of a knowledgeable team of leaders representing various technical areas. In this role, you will report directly to our Product Lead, while your closest day-to-day collaborator will be the Product Manager supervising the same cross-functional teams.

You’re responsible for delivery and outcomes across multiple engineering teams. In this role, you are a developer at heart but a leader by choice. You are someone who has lived the dev life, understands the technical trenches, but realized your true calling is empowering other developers to do their best work. You foster the environment in which engineers perform at their best and grow both as individuals and as a team. You do so by serving as a mentor and coach, ensuring each team member is clear on expectations, making sure our processes help rather than hinder, and working closely with engineers to ensure we are building high-quality software.

YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE

We are looking for a leader with an empowering management style—someone who knows how to motivate a team, establish a clear sense of direction, and build a resilient team spirit. You lead by enabling others rather than micromanaging, creating an environment where engineers feel ownership over their work.

Balancing empathy with high standards, you know how to keep the team accountable to their commitments and quality benchmarks. We want an engineering manager whose team will be standing on the top of the mountain with them—celebrating a shared victory together, energized by the journey rather than left behind exhausted on the path below. You will help your team(s) through the journey of becoming high-performing, building deep trust among the members, and helping them fine-tune their processes.

WHAT THIS ROLE ENTAILS:

- Vision & Alignment: Work closely with the Product Lead and Product Managers to set a clear vision and direction for your group of product teams. Align technical direction within your area with the overall technology direction of the company.

- Direct Management & Coaching: Directly manage, mentor, and oversee Engineers (and Tech Leads). Focus heavily on continuous training, upskilling, and professional growth for your team members.

- Accelerate AI Adoption: Evaluate, introduce, and integrate modern AI development tools and methodologies into the team's daily routines to safely boost developer velocity and innovation.

- Drive Quality & Mindset: Cultivate a customer-centric, solution-oriented mindset while holding a high standard for clean, high-quality, and scalable software delivery.

- Continuous Improvement: Continuously improve the environment, tooling, and processes for how we build our product, ensuring technical debt is managed and developer velocity is optimized.

- Department Representation: Represent engineering in key initiatives and projects within the department or across the company, ensuring they get delivered successfully.

- Organizational Design: Design the organization, establish clear objectives, and maintain a high standard in people, delivery, and technology.

YOU WILL THRIVE IN THIS ROLE IF YOU:

- Are a Technologist at Heart: You have concrete software development experience in your background and maintain a sharp, active interest in technology. While you won't be on the critical path for daily feature delivery, you aren't afraid to roll up your sleeves, dig into the technical details, and go back to the grounds to help the team unblock complex technical challenges. You speak the language of engineers fluently, using your technical depth to actively train, upskill, and elevate the team.

- Drive AI Transformation & Adaptability: You are highly adaptive to change and actively embrace AI-driven ways of working (such as leveraging AI coding assistants, automated testing, and LLM tooling to optimize workflows). Ideally, you have successfully championed this shift in a previous role and can enthusiastically coach and help our teams accelerate their own AI transformation.

- Have a Passion for People Management & Coaching: You transitioned into leadership because you genuinely care about people, culture, and team dynamics. You treat every challenge as a coaching opportunity, whether pairing with a developer or mapping out a career framework.

- Collaborate Cross-Functionally: You like to work with cross-functional teams and other stakeholders to align engineering functions with product and business direction. Each of our teams is made up of "co-founders" from Product and Engineering—joined by designers, coders, and commercial minds. You optimize for both customers and the business.

- Optimize Processes & Remove Roadblocks:

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