Engineering Manager - What's Expected in the Role?

This is a question that I see get asked all of the time and I figured I'd chime in on my perspective on it. Specifically, this is with the perspective of a software engineering manager in a tech organization. So, what are the primary responsibilities of an engineering manager at a tech company? Well before I dive in, I'll explain my background and then I'll offer up my perspective about the key parts to an engineering manager role.

---

My Background as an Engineering Manager

First off, here's full disclosure I have only been an engineering manager at two different companies. With that said, I have held an engineering manager role at two extremely different types of organizations for roughly 12 years now. My role at Magnet Forensics as an engineering manager started off as a team-leadership role when we were still a scrappy startup. As we hired on more folks, I helped lead small teams (sometimes 10+ but generally settled around 4-8) as a mix of software engineers and software testers. I was fortunate enough to grow along with our product offering, but only until shortly before I left was I still writing code regularly and managing small teams.

At Microsoft, I'm responsible for a team of under ten direct reports and I have several remote "dotted-line" reports (i.e. they have their own manager, but they're working with my direct reports as a cohesive team). The work we do is nothing like my previous role, but what's common is that we have some business requirements, some constraints, and really smart engineers working towards working through these challenges. A fundamental difference is that at Microsoft my team is entirely composed of engineers and no other dedicated roles (i.e. software testers). We carry out work differently but my focuses in my role are very similar - The role of an engineering manager in this case looks similar.

A lot of my philosophies around management and leadership boil down to focusing on servant leadership. That's not to say this is the only way an engineering manager can be successful, but as I discuss the focus areas this will likely shine through.

---

Engineering Manager Roles Are Different Everywhere

I think this is the first critical thing to call out, so if you're going to take anything from this it's the following:

An engineering manager at one organization may have very different expectations placed upon them compared to another organization, so if you're pursuing a career at a company as an engineering manager, research and understand how that company structures this role.

This might not be obvious to some people, but it's true and it's worth the time to understand. Some organizations place the emphasis of an engineering manager entirely around people interactions and career progression. Some have a large focus on managing projects while others have expectations that an engineering manager is directly contributing to the code base. If you're interested in this type of role, hopefully you know where your interests and strengths are (and if not, I urge you to reflect and think about this!) so that when you're evaluating organizations you can find a good fit.

---

Engineering Managers Put People First

Well in my opinion at least, the good ones do. The people that engineering managers lead are the most important part of their role. Ensuring that their team is engaged, working on challenging problems, learning, having access to the tools and resources they need, feeling supported in their career, etc... All of these aspects are the primary part of the role. They're all intertwined and influence each other so finding the right set of challenges can ensure people are learning, but different challenges might be more engaging. And while something might be more engaging, it might not be well-suited for someone progressing at their particular career stage.

While all of these things are focus areas for all of the individuals on the team, an engineering manager also needs to keep in mind that... they're individuals! In order to be effective they need to ensure that they're leveraging situational leadership and truly working with people one on one. It's something that's easily overlooked by many even though it might feel glaringly obvious when you read it.

Different people are at different points in their career. People appreciate different types of recognition. Different people are motivated by different challenges or learning opportunities. There are different perspectives. Different career history. Different culture. Everyone is different. An engineering manager truly needs to understand this to be an effective leader because a cookie-cutter approach to trying to lead a diverse team won't go very far.

It's important to note that even in roles where the engineering manager has a technical individual contribution portion of their regular work, the overall effectiveness of the team will outweigh individual contributions. It can certainly be a trap especially if the engineering manager is highly technical and productive in the technical domain, but trying to remain a multiplier for the overall effectiveness of the team should be paramount. Between ramping up more junior people to be more effective, giving principal-level engineers opportunities to focus on design and strategy, or finding new advanced challenges for senior engineers, finding the right way to bring out effectiveness in the team through situational leadership is the goal here.

---

Engineering Managers Understand Business Needs

There's an element to the engineering manager role that is focused on a blend between project and product management. For clarity, I define (in a short version) project management as the process of managing time and resource allocation about work efforts and product management as interpreting customer requirements as work efforts. These two things together allow an engineering manager to understand shifting timelines and changes in business priorities. It can be very difficult to lead a team if the engineering manager cannot coordinate the team members effectively or adjust to roadmap changes (as inevitably happens).

When organizations have dedicated roles for either/both project and/or product managers, it's still beneficial for the engineering manager to have a deep understanding of both of these. If not solely responsible, they will generally still be actively coordinating with these roles. Effectively, the engineering manager helps represent the team to these roles by relaying team status and needs while also bringing feedback back to the team to adjust as necessary. Depending on the size and complexity of the organization, an engineering manager may spend a large portion of their time actively collaborating with individuals in product and project management positions across a variety of intersecting teams.

---

Engineering Managers Are Technical

Some might say this isn't a must, and while I agree it may not be a must, I think it's really valuable! So I like looking at this as a spectrum to make it a bit more understandable. On one end of the spectrum, there are individuals who can jump right in and be an active individual contributor with an extremely high degree of effectiveness. In software, this could look like someone who can work in the codebase to add features or fix bugs or otherwise has a high degree of understanding of all of the systems working together.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are individuals who understand the domain just enough to check the box for understanding the business needs. In my experience, there generally seems to be an inverse relationship between how technical an engineering manager is and how well they focus on the people on the team. It's not a rule though. I think the really good ones keep up the technical focus without skipping a beat on all the people-related responsibilities.

---

Balancing In An Engineering Manager Role

Clearly, it's a tricky balance. The more time spent working with people and coordinating with other stakeholders, the less time there is for individual contribution. In many engineering manager roles, there isn't even an expectation of individual contribution so it's especially hard to keep up on the technical details. The engineering managers that I've seen balance this well may not be so far on the technical side of the spectrum that they can dive into the codebase, but they have an overall architectural view. They can also understand and relay technical aspects from team members to other stakeholders and similarly apply stakeholder feedback with more technical context when communicating back with the team.

Aside from some of the obvious benefits technical skills bring to communication and coordination, I think an aspect that is overlooked comes down to trust and respect of team members. In my personal experience, I have seen engineering managers get buy-in from team members when they can prove they understand the technical challenges the team has to work through. Suddenly the engineering manager becomes much more relatable and in those delicate situations where an authoritative decision must be made, it's easier to get behind it when you trust the person understands the technical details.

While not every engineering manager role may define expectations around technical aspects, I do think that it's extremely beneficial.

---

Summarizing The Engineering Manager Role

To recap, everything discussed is my perspective from my career as an engineering manager and software developer. It's not the only way, but I think it touches on three of the most important aspects:

• Focus on enabling people on the team to do their best work
• Understand project and product requirements to translate between the team and stakeholders
• Have a thorough technical understanding of the domain to tie this all together

If you want to stay up to date with the latest content I produce, check out my weekly newsletter! I generally incorporate the perspective of an engineering manager in a lot of my software engineering topics!