Position Overview
The Development Manager leads one or more software development teams responsible for designing, building, testing, deploying, and supporting software products and services. The Development Manager ensures that development teams deliver high-quality software solutions while maintaining strong engineering practices, technical excellence, and a culture of ownership.
Unlike traditional project-centric management structures, this role leads developer-centric delivery teams where engineers are responsible for requirements analysis, solution design, coding, testing, deployment, and operational support. The Development Manager focuses on building team capability, removing impediments, defining technical direction, improving engineering practices, and ensuring successful business outcomes.
The Development Manager partners closely with Product Owners, Product Managers, Architects, and business stakeholders to align business priorities with technical execution.
Key Responsibilities
People Leadership
- Coach, mentor, and professionally develop software engineers and technical leads.
- Establish clear performance expectations and career growth plans.
- Conduct performance reviews and provide regular feedback.
- Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, learning, and continuous improvement.
- Recruit, interview, and onboard technical talent.
- Identify succession planning and leadership development opportunities.
- Promote collaboration and knowledge sharing across teams.
Technical Leadership
- Provide technical guidance and decision-making support for complex initiatives.
- Ensure teams follow software engineering standards, architectural principles, and security practices.
- Partner with Architects and Technical Leads to establish technical roadmaps.
- Drive adoption of modern development practices and tools.
- Review technical approaches and challenge assumptions when appropriate.
- Ensure maintainability, scalability, security, and operational readiness of solutions.
- Support teams in resolving high-priority technical issues and escalations.
Product Delivery
- Ensure teams consistently deliver business value through iterative software releases.
- Partner with Product Owners to balance business needs, technical debt, platform investments, and operational requirements.
- Monitor team capacity and workload to achieve sustainable delivery.
- Remove organizational and technical impediments.
- Drive accountability for commitments and outcomes.
- Ensure development teams participate actively in:
- Requirements analysis
- Solution design
- Software development
- Testing and quality assurance
- Deployment
- Production support
Engineering Excellence
- Champion engineering best practices including:
- Secure coding
- Automated testing
- CI/CD
- Code reviews
- DevOps
- Observability
- Performance optimization
- Establish engineering metrics and improvement plans.
- Promote reusable components, patterns, and standards.
- Encourage experimentation and innovation.
- Foster a quality-first mindset where every engineer owns quality.
Strategic and Organizational Leadership
- Translate business strategy into actionable technical objectives.
- Align team objectives with organizational goals.
- Participate in budgeting, staffing, and resource planning.
- Drive continuous improvement initiatives across teams.
- Build strong partnerships with stakeholders at all levels.
- Communicate progress, risks, dependencies, and opportunities to leadership.
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
- 7+ years of software development experience.
- 3+ years of experience leading or managing software engineering teams.
- Strong understanding of modern software development lifecycle practices.
- Experience with Agile software delivery methodologies.
- Demonstrated success delivering business-critical software products.
- Experience mentoring developers and technical leaders.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
Preferred
- Experience managing cross-functional product teams.
- Experience with cloud-native architectures and platforms.
- Experience with DevOps and CI/CD practices.
- Experience with microservices, APIs, and distributed systems.
- Experience with application security practices.
- Experience managing geographically distributed teams.
Core Competencies
Technical Leadership
- Software Architecture Awareness
- Engineering Decision Making
- Technical Coaching
- Systems Thinking
Delivery Leadership
- Agile Delivery
- Planning and Prioritization
- Risk Management
- Operational Excellence
People Leadership
- Coaching and Mentoring
- Team Development
- Conflict Resolution
- Talent Assessment
Business Leadership
- Strategic Thinking
- Customer Focus
- Organizational Awareness
- Financial and Resource Management
Success Measures
The Development Manager will be measured on:
Delivery Outcomes
- Predictable release delivery
- Achievement of business objectives
- Quality of delivered solutions
Engineering Health
- Defect trends
- Technical debt management
- System reliability
- Security posture
Team Health
- Employee engagement
- Retention
- Internal promotions
- Skill development
Operational Metrics
- Deployment frequency
- Lead time for changes
- Change failure rate
- Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
