Job Description: Engineering Manager

Company Overview:

We are a dynamic B2B SaaS startup disrupting the travel industry with innovative management solutions. Sembark developed a game-changing Saas platform for tour operators and destination management companies (DMCs), offering cutting-edge tools to streamline internal tasks and tour operations with enhanced customer experiences.

Our innovative tools slash turnaround time by 80%, unleashing 40% greater operational productivity, and 90% on-time payments.

We are a bootstrapped, profitable startup based out of Jaipur, India. You can visit our website to learn more about us. We are a bunch of serial entrepreneurs out of IIT Kanpur & NIT Kurukshetra.

Position: Engineering Manager

Location: Jaipur

Job Type: Full-time and Work from Office

Responsibilities:

1. Leadership

- Lead by example by actively contributing to code, reviews, & architecture decisions.

- Earn respect through action - regularly demonstrate hands-on coding skills & depth.

- Stay grounded by getting your hands dirty, not just supervising them.

- Be the first to dive in when the team hits roadblocks - debug, prototype, & unblock.

- Model engineering excellence through clean code, strong design principles, and attention to detail.

- Set the pace for quality, velocity, and ownership through your own work discipline.

2. Engineering Delivery & Execution

- Own sprint planning, velocity tracking, and delivery commitments.

- Break features into clear, estimable tasks with Product Managers.

- Ensure 90-95% sprint completion with minimal spillover.

- Identify and unblock team bottlenecks before they impact deadlines.

3. PR Review Process & Code Quality

- Enforce coding standards and PR templates.

- Set SLAs for PR review and ensure timely closures.

- Reduce back-and-forth by mentoring developers on writing clean, modular code.

- Delegate PR reviews to tech leads but ensure final accountability.

4. People Management & Mentorship

- Build, Mentor and Manage team of engineers (backend, frontend, QA).

- Conduct weekly 1:1s, performance tracking, skill mapping, and growth plans.

- Create a culture of documentation, ownership, and high accountability.

- Handle conflict resolution and guide the team in problem-solving.

5. Release Management

- Oversee release cycles with QA and DevOps.

- Maintain a predictable and stable release cadence (fortnightly/monthly).

- Ensure zero broken releases and low regression discipline.

6. Cross-functional Collaboration

- Work closely with Product Managers to translate requirements into engineering plans.

- Collaborate with Senior Product Designer for UX alignment.

- Align with CTO & Principal System Architect on architecture, scaling, and security.

7. Talent Acquisition & Onboarding

- Interview and hire backend, frontend, and QA engineers.

- Build onboarding plans for new engineers to become productive within 30-45 instead of the usual 60 days.

- Define competency matrices and skill expectations for each role.

8. Engineering Culture & Processes

- Define and implement engineering best practices:

- Branching strategy

- Documentation standards

- Testing & QA processes

- DevOps collaboration

- Incident management

- Champion continuous improvement & engineering excellence.

Requirements:

Must-have Technical Skills:

- Strong full-stack background (Laravel preferred, React/Vue/Next exposure ideal).

- Deep experience in backend architecture, API design, and system scalability.

- Strong understanding of frontend performance and UI development.

- Comfortable with DevOps basics (CI/CD, staging/prod environments, logs, monitoring).

- Experience working in a product-based or SaaS environment.

Management Skills:

- Proven team leadership (6+ years managing backend + frontend teams).

- Excellent task delegation & execution management.

- Past experience in building and scaling teams from 0

- Ability to drive accountability and set clear expectations.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

The EM will be measured by:

- Delivery

- Sprint completion rate - 90%

- Release stability with < 3% critical issues post-release

- Reduction in PR cycle time by 30-40%

- Team Performance

- Productivity improvements per developer

- Training & upskilling of juniors - faster independence

- Team satisfaction + low turnover

- Process Maturity

- Implementation of engineering playbooks

- Improved documentation quality

- Bug reduction over each quarter

Benefits:

- Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.

- Opportunity to work with a dynamic and innovative team in a fast-growing startup environment.

- Chance to work directly with CXOs and set up the core tech vertical for the organisation.

- Continuous learning and development opportunities.