Technical Engineering Manager

About Us

Manara is a San Francisco-based social impact
startup whose mission is to unlock human potential and diversify the
global tech sector while uplifting the economies of the Middle East
& North Africa (MENA), with an emphasis on Palestine and women. The
region has the highest youth unemployment in the world (higher than
sub-Saharan Africa) despite high levels of tertiary education. Women are
particularly impacted: in Palestine, 52% of computer science students
are women, but 83% of them end up unemployed.

Our initial success was with an entirely remote solution which
identified the top computer scientists in the region, taught them how
to pass interviews, vetted them, and helped them find amazing jobs
(both remote and on-site). And it worked:  at Google 71% of our
referrals in our last batch were hired.   We've converted that learning
into a multi-modal, self-learning online platform so we can
exponentially grow the number of people we help.  Our platform already
has more than 50k active users each month and is rapidly growing.

Our team previously worked at Google, Amazon, Upwork, Nvidia, Box,
and Gaza Sky Geeks. We are experienced founders, operators, and
technologists.  We value diversity in our own team as much as we do in
the industry.  For example, our engineering team includes people in 7
different countries and is 50% female.

Our investors include Stripe, Y Combinator, Seedcamp, Reid Hoffman,
Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Namrata Ganatra (the former CTO of
Lambda School), Christina Sass (the former President of Andela), and
Emma Tracey (the founder of Honeypot).

What we offer all members of our team:

• Career growth prospects within a fast-growing, San Francisco-based startup
• Remote work
• Flexible working schedule
• Unlimited vacation and regular monthly “recharge” days to ensure you’re taking care of your own well-being

Your Role

As a member of a small team of product people and engineers at a growing startup, every
day you will guide the engineering team as they work on  our core product.  We are
constantly innovating new ways to help our users and make their
experience better, so we rely on every member of our team to have a
strong ownership mindset.  This helps us ship fast and maintain high
quality in our work.

Our tech product’s mission is to:

1. Upskill our users across a variety of technical and behavioral skills
2. Improve access to learning critical skills and knowledge for underserved communities in MENA
   
3. Build a community of technical talent in MENA where they can inspire & support each other

Imagine a blend of Udacity, Grammarly, LinkedIn, and Stack Overflow for the MENA region. :-) 

You’ll work with engineering, product, support, and other stakeholders to make sure you understand the company's objectives and will own engineering's efforts to meet those objectives.

Our team believes strongly in constant learning and growth.  Our tech
stack covers a wide variety of tools and requires regular collaboration
and knowledge sharing.  The ideal candidate prides themselves on their
ability to quickly learn and one who goes out of their way to share that
learning with the team.

Responsibilities:

• Keep the engineering team focused on priorities and free of any blockers
• Run planning and retro meetings each sprint
• Own individual engineering efforts end-to-end including providing engineer
  expertise where necessary (e.g. design, advice on best practices, review
  and feedback)
• Continually refine engineering processes to ensure the highest quality product for our users
• Representing engineering in planning and other cross-team meetings
• Mentor engineering team members and provide regular feedback to support their growth
• Ensure code quality standards are being maintained
• Contribute as an IC when necessary

Your Qualifications

Note: Diverse candidates often screen themselves out of job
applications if they don’t have all the qualifications. Please apply if
you’re excited about the role - we’d love to see your application!

Technical skills (required):

• 5+ years of professional software developer experience
• Experience as an Engineering Manager
• Experience building cloud-based products

Technical skills (nice to have):

• 2+ years of experience as an Engineering Manager
• Experience in EdTech, Learning & Development or related industry
• Experience with JavaScript
• Experience with TypeScript
• Experience with Jira, Git, and Figma
• Experience with AWS
• Experience using LLMs in a user-facing product

Soft skills:

• Strong communication skills: You pride yourself on your clear communication,
  both written and spoken.  Note: As a multi-cultural team from a variety
  of backgrounds, we work entirely in English to make sure that no one is
  excluded from any conversations.
• Remote: You have experience working on
  effective remote teams & thrive in such environments. You work well
  across time zones (e.g., you communicate effectively via asynchronous
  oral & verbal channels).
• Ability to handle ambiguity: we’re an early-stage startup which means the roadmap will change .
• Self-driven and biased towards action: As a small startup, we depend heavily on each person to be reliable
  and effective. You get things done efficiently and accurately, with
  little need for supervision. You use tools like Jira & remember
  everything that needs to get done.

• Collaboration/team player: You can work
  effectively with other people at Manara. As a small team spread out
  around the globe, we often end up working with a shifting group of
  people from the wider team.  This means we all need to make sure we're
  able to confidently work with anyone else at the company at any time.
  
• Growth mentality: You love learning, are hungry for feedback, and can quickly learn new things (process, technologies, etc.).
• Passionate about Manara’s mission of creating a community that unlocks the full potential of top tech talent in MENA (with a focus on Palestine & women).

Location

We are a fully remote team but often like to work 'synchronously
asynchronous', so your specific location doesn't matter but, to
guarantee effective teamwork, we generally require our developers to be
between UTC-4 and UTC+3.  To ensure we all have time to work together
each day, we require everyone to be available from noon to 4 p.m. UTC.

Our engineering team today is spread between Brazil, Egypt, France, Jordan,
Palestine, Poland, and the UK. Our company also has staff in the US,
other parts of MENA, and beyond!  The US team travels regularly to
Europe (including Eastern Europe) and MENA, and we do 1-2 annual,
company-wide meetups for everyone to get together, socialize, and
co-work.