Engineering Manager

About NetX

NetX, part of Heritage Werks Group (HWG), is one of the longest-tenured and most trusted enterprise digital asset management platforms in the industry—with decades spent building the infrastructure that corporations, sports franchises, museums, government agencies, and cultural institutions rely on to organize, govern, and surface the content and knowledge that define them.

Based in Portland, Oregon, NetX is the digital foundation of the Heritage Intelligence ecosystem, making institutional knowledge secure, searchable, discoverable, and accessible across teams—and serving as the trusted content layer that powers NetX AuthorityAI™, our enterprise AI product built on governed institutional knowledge.

Our team works with galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and many of the world’s most iconic brands to turn enterprise content into a trusted, connected asset.

The Opportunity

NetX is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the day-to-day effectiveness of its engineering organization. This role combines strong people leadership, sound technical judgment, and disciplined operating practices across Java, Platform, SysOps, UI, QA, and Product. The Engineering Manager will create clarity, accountability, and healthy collaboration while enabling the CTO to focus on product strategy, architecture, innovation, and strategic partnerships.

This is a management-first role. The successful candidate must be technically credible and capable of reviewing work or contributing when needed, but sustained individual-contributor output is not the primary measure of success.

Role Mandate

· Own people management for the engineering organization, including regular one-on-ones, coaching, performance reviews, development planning, recognition, and corrective action.

· Translate company and product priorities into clear team expectations, operating rhythms, and accountable execution.

· Raise engineering quality by identifying gaps early—before defects, unclear requirements, or incomplete work move downstream to Product, QA, or SysOps.

· Build a constructive, high-accountability culture in which senior employees communicate directly, resolve conflict professionally, and follow through on commitments.

· Reduce routine operational escalation to the CTO while preserving appropriate visibility into material technical, staffing, and business decisions.

Core Responsibilities

People Leadership and Accountability

· Directly manage engineering team members and team leads across Java, Platform, SysOps, UI, QA, and Product, with the final reporting structure determined as the organization evolves.

· Set role expectations and measurable goals; conduct timely performance reviews and maintain clear documentation of feedback, support, and outcomes.

· Coach employees and leads through performance, communication, and collaboration challenges; address concerns early and consistently.

· Own hiring, onboarding, development, succession planning, and—when necessary—disciplinary and separation processes in partnership with People Operations.

· Create an environment where feedback is direct, respectful, evidence-based, and oriented toward improvement.

Engineering Execution and Quality

· Partner with Product and technical leads to ensure project scopes, requirements, ownership, and acceptance criteria are understood before implementation begins.

· Establish practical quality gates for specifications, technical design, documentation, code review, testing, and release readiness.

· Review technical work at the appropriate level to identify obvious quality, process, or architectural concerns before they become downstream defects.

· Balance delivery speed, quality, technical debt, and operational risk; make decisions directly when they fall within the role’s authority.

· Use delivery and quality indicators to identify recurring bottlenecks, clarify root causes, and drive durable improvements.

Operating Leadership

· Run an effective operating cadence for engineering, including team-lead coordination, planning, status visibility, risk escalation, and follow-through.

· Clarify decision rights and responsibilities within NetX’s matrixed environment so issues are resolved at the right level.

· Coordinate effectively with Product, Customer Success, Revenue, Security, Finance, and external technology partners.

· Own the development, maintenance, and governance of engineering process and policy documentation (SOPs) across the engineering organization, partnering with team leads and the CTO to define, refine, and gain buy-in on standards before they are rolled out, and adjusting them when evidence shows they are not working.

· Resolve cross-team conflict promptly and reinforce standards for curiosity, listening, respectful challenge, and shared accountability.

Technical Leadership

· Maintain enough technical depth to earn trust, evaluate tradeoffs, challenge assumptions, and distinguish genuine complexity from avoidable delay.

· Partner with the CTO and senior engineers on architecture, scalability, reliability, security, and modernization decisions.

· Contribute hands-on through targeted reviews, technical discovery, incident support, or limited coding when business needs warrant it.

· Support responsible adoption of AI-enabled and specification-driven engineering practices while maintaining human accountability for quality and outcomes.

What Success Looks Like

· First 30 days: Build trust, understand the architecture and delivery model, establish one-on-ones, clarify decision rights, and identify immediate people and execution risks.

· By 60 days: Implement a consistent management cadence, document role expectations, strengthen planning and quality checkpoints, and establish practical escalation paths.

· By 90 days: Own engineering operations with materially fewer routine escalations to the CTO; demonstrate progress on team accountability, collaboration, and delivery predictability.

· By six months: Run a credible performance-review cycle, develop the team leads, reduce preventable downstream defects and rework, and present a clear staffing and capability plan.

Requirements

• Required Qualifications
• · Substantial software-engineering experience, including technical leadership in a commercial SaaS or enterprise-software environment.
• · Demonstrated success managing engineers directly, including goal setting, coaching, performance reviews, difficult feedback, and performance improvement.
• · Strong working knowledge of modern software-delivery practices, code review, testing, release management, and operational reliability.
• · Technical credibility in software and/or SaaS applications and the ability to engage meaningfully with UI, QA, cloud, and product stakeholders.
• · Experience leading distributed or remote teams and creating accountability without relying on constant supervision.
• · A record of resolving conflict, making timely decisions, and communicating clearly with both technical and nontechnical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• · Experience with AWS-hosted products, scaling mature platforms, modernization, or vendor-supported engineering programs.
• · Experience in digital asset management, content platforms, metadata-rich systems, or adjacent enterprise technology.
• · Familiarity with AI-assisted development, specification-driven development, information security, and privacy requirements.
• · Experience working in a small organization where leaders must move comfortably between strategy, management, and selective hands-on execution.
• Leadership Profile
• · Management-first: Derives satisfaction from helping teams perform, not from being a developer.
• · Technically grounded: Earns credibility through judgment, fluency, and effectiveness rather than title alone.
• · Direct and composed: Addresses difficult issues early without becoming adversarial or avoiding conflict.
• · Process-oriented but pragmatic: Creates enough structure to improve outcomes without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• · Curious and low-ego: Listens before concluding, tests assumptions, and changes course when the evidence warrants it.
• · Accountable: Documents decisions, closes loops, and ensures commitments translate into results.
• Decision Authority
• The Engineering Manager is expected to make routine staffing, execution, process, prioritization, and cross-team operating decisions within agreed boundaries. Material architectural choices, major investments, staffing decisions, and changes affecting company strategy remain collaborative decisions with the CTO and other executives.
• Culture & Work Environment
• NetX is a high-trust, entrepreneurial environment where ownership, creativity, and initiative are valued—and where results are recognized. We believe in:
• · Great teammates over egos
• · A culture of appreciation and recognition
• · Innovation over bureaucracy
• · Work that is measurable, meaningful, and visible
• · A company that rewards contribution
• You’ll play a key role in creating first impressions with future customers while helping bring a next-generation AI-powered platform to organizations around the world.