Software Engineering Manager

About Seasats:

We are a nimble, highly technical business that provides defense, scientific, and commercial customers with maritime robotics solutions. Our primary products are autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) built to carry sensors at sea for months at a time.

The company is located in sunny San Diego and includes talented engineers, builders, tinkerers, and business architects. Internally, our work culture is hard working but fun. Externally, we’ve built a reputation for being professional, knowledgeable, and dedicated to getting the job done. For more info, check out seasats.com.

Role: Software Engineering Manager

Location: San Diego, CA (in-office)

Salary: $140,000 - 170,000 / yr + stock options, 401k matching, and other benefits.

Role Overview:

We’re looking for a hard-charging software manager – a coding virtuoso, management savant, and champion at getting stuff done. So far, Seasats' team of five developers has succeeded by being technically savvy, nimble, and aggressively fast. As we grow our software team to 10+, we're seeking a Software Engineering Manager to lead that skilled cross-functional team, taking on responsibility for vehicle-side firmware and application software, as well as server-side infrastructure software and web applications.

The maritime robotics industry is evolving rapidly, with breakthroughs in autonomy, sensing, and real-time data applications constantly unlocking new technologies and use cases. This person will have a rare opportunity to work at the cutting edge, playing a critical role as we push the boundaries of our industry.

About You:

You’re a skilled engineer with excellent people-management skills, and you’re excited to lead a cross-functional team of engineers in tackling rad real-world problems. You’re goal-driven, campaign-oriented, comfortable managing diverse sub-teams, and unfazed by shifting priorities. You’ve built some preferences and principles through your career, but you’ll take sound reasoning and hard data over “that’s just how it’s done” every time. Outside work, you probably set ambitious personal goals and get a lot of satisfaction from hitting them.

Requirements:

• You have 8+ years of overall software industry experience, and 2+ years of experience managing software teams.
• You have deep experience building, testing, and maintaining a stable and evolving production code base (ideally using one or more of: C, C++, Python, Typescript, React).
• You’re dangerous across the software development spectrum: designing robust backend systems, building user-friendly interfaces, and doing real-time embedded software development and infrastructure optimization.
• You have experience leading and hiring at fast-growing startups.
• You can balance fast-paced feature development with maintaining a stable codebase.
• You have solid PowerPoint and diagramming skills.
• You’ve read (by the time you hit submit on this application).
  • https://www.seangoedecke.com/how-to-ship/
  • https://korshakov.com/posts/no-bugs
  • “No silver bullet – Essence and accident in software engineering”
    • This article is long; consider ChatGPT if you’re tight on time.

Bonus points if you have:

• Literacy with networking and IT.
• Literacy in modern machine learning approaches.

Role Details

For the right person, this will be a dream job. If you aren’t goal-based, don’t like being direct, and get overwhelmed by changing priorities, you’re probably not that person. You will report to a leadership team that is very technically knowledgeable, so high-level or abstract excuses for why stuff doesn’t work will fly for approximately 3 seconds. Prepare accordingly.

Some specific tasks will include:

• Running regular software team standups and full department meetings.
• Maintaining a working list of the software team’s top projects, and keeping your mental model ready to respond fluently to leadership questions and inbound requests.
• Maintaining an understanding of overall company priorities and how software efforts fit into that.
• Juggling competing requests to harden/mature/reduce tech debt vs. ship product.
• Building your technical knowledge across as many systems as possible.
• Participating in management planning sessions about upcoming features and helping budget for them.
• Working with individual developers to:
  • White board and clearly communicate scope.
  • Get in the weeds, troubleshoot code, and solve problems.
  • Provide 1:1 discussion and mentorship when needed.
• Anticipating and solving people problems (preemptively is always best :] ).
• Interfacing with other company departments (Electrical, Mechanical, Production, etc.) and managing cross-department interactions that affect the Software team.
• Tracking daily, weekly, and monthly progress for the Software department, and summarizing that progress for the leadership team.
• Scoping projects and helping shape development goals and timelines.
• Providing a daily summary to the CTO and CEO.

Life at Seasats:

Along with your salary, you’ll receive perks including:

• Stock options
• Competitive insurance (including a 99% employer-covered Gold HMO plan or other options)
• 401k matching up to 4% of salary
• Four free lunches per week
• An employee activity fund
• A pet-friendly office
• Unlimited/Flex PTO

We’ll help you ramp up and will regularly take time to discuss what’s working and what’s not. We’re also big on personal freedoms: if you’re on top of your responsibilities and want the afternoon off to surf or spend time with friends and family, go for it! We have flexible hours, accommodating PTO, and a personable, high-achieving work culture. We want someone who’s excited to work hard and have fun in this environment.

Our values are listed below; we’re happy to explain them more during the interview process.

• Get Stuff Done
• Be Kind
• Fight Entropy
• Attack with Overwhelming Force
• Ask More Questions
• Lines, Not Dots

Hiring Notes:

If you decide to apply, you’ll be asked to provide a resume and answer a few screening questions. If we decide to move forward with your application, you can expect no more than 2-3 more rounds of virtual interviews before a final in-person interview. If you have to travel to San Diego, we’ll reimburse pre-approved travel costs.

Please note that we are currently unable to sponsor employment visas, so candidates must be independently authorized to work in the United States.

We appreciate diverse perspectives and life experiences, so we encourage women, minorities, and people of all backgrounds to apply. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

We look forward to reviewing your application!