The Engineering Manager role does not have a consistent industry-wide definition; it’s a leadership role within a team, but the expectation on how the leadership is handled, what background is required, and what area of growth every EM has, differs from organization to organization.
Principles
Soft skills
The minimum requirement is a genuine interest in people and human interactions. In this area, some traits are essential:
Empathy (the capacity to understand and share the feeling of others).
Observation (observing the interaction between people and how they communicate verbally and non-verbally).
Listening skills (paying attention, providing feedback, and deferring judgment).
Feedback (be able to provide and receive feedback properly, even the negative one).
Background
The people who join the EM path could have different backgrounds; some could be stronger technically, some have better knowledge of Process and Agile, and others are better at dealing with people and teams. We aim to leverage these unique characters, not to reduce everyone to a single stereotype.
In this scenario, the EM could cover the EM and Tech Lead roles based on their technical background and aspiration, but this is not a generalized rule, and we don’t expect that every EM is also a Tech Lead.
”Most importantly, their main value add is not necessarily through making decisions related to the specialist field (e.g. system architecture). Instead, they manage the surrounding system & structure to ensure people closest to the work have the best context and information to make better decisions. They provide enough support, time and/or budget to enable others to do what they do best.” Patt Kua: https://www.thekua.com/atwork/2019/02/the-trident-model-of-career-development/
General Work Description
We expect they manage a team of 6 ± 2 people, working on a variable number of projects, from 1 to 3, depending on duration, complexity, and customer relationship. The general rule is that in every team, the EM (if not a Tech EM) will be paired with a senior developer who helps in the project's technical direction and mentoring technical practices.
The EM helps the team identify the right priorities and keeping the focus on them, and they partner closely with the Customer to manage project scope and ensure that expectations are set and met.
The EM at least knows the basics of Agile methodology and they are able to apply it in the team, and explain the basis.
EM is comfortable interacting with team members whose skills may differ from their own and communicating expectations clearly to all team members - soliciting and delivering individual feedback often.
Management
The EM role is the entry point in the Management career path.
Management is a broad discipline, so vast that it is even difficult to answer the simple question: “What is management?”.
We will better cover the management topic on another page. Still, to better understand, we could define four dimensions (People, Business, Organization, Technology) and map the EM expectations in each dimension.
People - The essential trait for an EM is to deal with people, create an inclusive team environment, focus on people's well-being, spot their strengths and weaknesses, and evaluate their performance with objectiveness and empathy. Your overall goal is to create the condition for the team to glue and become a performing team.
Business - Customer Management - On the business side, the slightest expectation is that an EM can maintain a constant dialogue with the Customer, thoroughly understand their needs and suggest appropriate solutions. By acquiring experience, the EM will get exposure to the financial aspects of the project (revenue, margin, etc.) and help a senior manager keep track of these metrics.
Organization - A team does not live in a bubble but is part of a more complex system. An EM must be aware of this, promote initiatives that have a broader impact than their team, and act as an advocate for the initiatives coming from the leadership team.
Technology - An EM must be at least technology aware and have a software development or operations background. Another important aspect is that they need to understand the problems of team members and guide the team to find a solution and deal with challenging issues. It’s not expected that an EM is an expert in a domain, but they can spot the excellence in the team and value them. Confident with different aspects of technology, the EM can thus act as a conduit between specialists whose jargon may be different, facilitating and influencing critical decisions.
Career
During their career, an EM could improve their knowledge and skill set in the process domain, people and team management, consultancy, or product development.
An EM career starts focusing on their team. Still, we expect that by increasing seniority, an EM adopts a System Thinking approach, remembering that they are part of an organization and a wider management team. This broader focus is essential for their career development.