{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"c077dea35dbf5c8b3e84b772","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/c077dea35dbf5c8b3e84b772","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/c077dea35dbf5c8b3e84b772","title":"Software Engineering Manager","description":"Job Purpose/Summary\n\nThis role leads the people, operating system, and delivery effectiveness of Knowmadics' Advanced Technologies software engineering organization across multiple product and program efforts. The role is expected to carry approximately six to ten senior engineers or technical leads as direct reports, plus selected individual contributors, and to provide managerial accountability for an overall software engineering organization of roughly 20 to 25 people.\n\nReporting to the CPTO, this role owns day-to-day people leadership, organizational design, workforce planning, performance management, engineering capacity, and cross-team delivery discipline. The Manager partners closely with the EVP of Product, Director of Product, EVP of Production Engineering, program leaders, and senior technical staff. Product leaders retain ownership of product outcomes and priorities; senior technical leaders retain architecture and domain authority; this role makes those functions more effective by creating clear accountability, healthy teams, and reliable execution.\n\nThis is a technical player-coach role rather than a coordination-only position. The Manager stays close to the work through design and code reviews, incident and support investigation, technical planning, and small unplanned contributions when appropriate. Planned roadmap work remains with the engineering teams. The Manager is also a hands-on owner of the Jira execution model across engineering efforts, helping teams maintain actionable tickets, healthy backlogs, visible dependencies, and credible delivery forecasts without turning process into an end in itself.\n\nSuccess in this role looks like engineers who receive useful coaching, senior engineers who deliver meaningful impact to the business and grow into effective leaders, product teams that understand what matters next, risks that surface early, and software that moves from prototype through production with predictable delivery, appropriate technical quality, and mission-user trust.\n\nDuties and Responsibilities\n\nPeople Leadership and Organization\n\nLead and develop senior engineers, engineering leads, and selected individual contributors through regular coaching, performance management, growth planning, and succession development.\nDesign sustainable reporting lines and team structures; lead hiring, onboarding, retention, workforce planning, and capability development for software engineering.\nAllocate engineering capacity across product, applied research, customer-funded, and internal efforts; resolve priority conflicts, reduce fragmentation, and surface portfolio tradeoffs to the CPTO.\n\nDelivery and Jira Operations\n\nOwn the software engineering operating rhythm across product efforts, including practical Jira standards, actionable backlogs, dependency management, release readiness, and escalation paths.\nPartner with Product and Program leaders to convert priorities and milestones into feasible plans, staffing assumptions, acceptance criteria, and credible delivery forecasts.\nUse flow, quality, and reliability data to identify bottlenecks and improve delivery; keep technical debt, risks, and commitments visible without using metrics as individual productivity scores.\n\nTechnical and Cross-Functional Leadership\n\nStay close to architecture, code, incidents, and technical planning; contribute to small unplanned work when useful without becoming the critical-path owner of planned roadmap features.\nPartner with Staff and Principal Engineers and the EVP of Production Engineering on architecture, security, DevSecOps, reliability, observability, testing, CI/CD, and transition from prototypes to supported products.\nSupport capture, estimation, staffing, customer technical exchanges, program reviews, and lightweight engineering governance for new and existing opportunities.\nMonitor organizational health, workload, and leadership capacity; provide the CPTO with decision-ready recommendations and continuously improve engineering practices, including secure AI-assisted development.\n\nQualifications\n\nRequired\n\n10+ years of progressive software engineering experience delivering production systems, including 5+ years of formal people management or engineering leadership.\nThe stated experience and education requirements describe the typical path to this level and are not a gate. Knowmadics will consider an equivalent combination of education, professional experience, and demonstrated skill, and makes exceptions for candidates who can evidence the scope, complexity, and judgment the role requires.\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.\nExperience leading multiple teams or an engineering organization of approximately 15 or more people through direct and indirect reports, including senior technical staff.\nStrong hands-on engineering judgment across distributed systems, APIs, data flows, containers, cloud or edge deployment, CI/CD, and secure software delivery; able to review designs and code and lead incident investigation.\nProven success hiring, coaching, evaluating, and retaining engineers; managing staffing across matrixed efforts; and operating Jira or a comparable platform for backlog quality, dependencies, forecasting, and delivery flow.\nStrong communication and judgment when balancing product, customer, security, reliability, and organizational tradeoffs in mission-critical or regulated environments.\nEligible to obtain a U.S. Security Clearance - U.S. Citizenship required\n\nStrongly Preferred\n\nExperience with DoD software delivery, ATO processes, DevSecOps, or secure software supply chains.\nExperience in a startup or scale-up environment with matrixed teams, platform or reliability engineering, developer-experience investments, or governed AI-assisted software development.\n\nWorking conditions\n\nEmployees may be called upon to participate in in-person meetings, trainings, or company functions at Knowmadics offices or other designated locations. Travel in support of business operations may also be required, and employees are expected to comply with these obligations as part of their position.\nRemote, with preference given to candidates located within approximately 40 miles of Wichita, KS; Lawton, OK; or Round Rock, TX. Relocation assistance may be negotiable for the right candidate.\nEstimated travel: 10-15 percent for customer meetings, government program reviews, demonstrations, exercises, industry events, partner engagements, and in-person collaboration.\nSome weekend or off-hours work may be required to support deployments, exercise windows, customer demonstrations, incident response, or operational deadlines.\nStandard business hours with flexibility to support distributed teams and customers across U.S. time zones.\n\nPhysical requirements\n\nMay include sitting or standing for extended periods, working with computers and technical equipment, occasional lifting or moving of materials and equipment up to 35 lbs, and travel to field, range, or demonstration environments where conditions may include outdoor weather, noise, and the operational tempo typical of defense exercises.\n\nDirect reports\n\nExpected to include approximately six to ten Senior Engineers, Staff Engineers, or Engineering Leads, plus selected software engineering individual contributors transferred from existing reporting lines. The role carries managerial accountability for an overall software engineering organization of roughly 20 to 25 people through direct and indirect reports. Span of control is expected to grow toward the upper end of this range as the organization scales and additional Engineering Leads are established; sustained spans above ten are treated as a signal to split the team rather than as a steady state. Final reporting assignments will be calibrated with the CPTO and HR as the organization is implemented.\n\nExperience with DoD software delivery, ATO processes, DevSecOps, or secure software supply chains.\nExperience in a startup or scale-up environment with matrixed teams, platform or reliability engineering, developer-experience investments, or governed AI-assisted software development.\n\nAll qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.","company":"Knowmadics","rawCompany":"knowmadics","city":"Marienthal","state":"KS","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-09-01T10:45:10.185Z","occupations":[{"code":"11-9041.00","title":"Architectural and Engineering Managers","slug":"architectural-and-engineering-managers"},{"code":"11-3021.00","title":"Computer and Information Systems Managers","slug":"computer-and-information-systems-managers"},{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"}],"industries":[{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"},{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Software Engineering Manager","description":"Job Purpose/Summary\n\nThis role leads the people, operating system, and delivery effectiveness of Knowmadics' Advanced Technologies software engineering organization across multiple product and program efforts. The role is expected to carry approximately six to ten senior engineers or technical leads as direct reports, plus selected individual contributors, and to provide managerial accountability for an overall software engineering organization of roughly 20 to 25 people.\n\nReporting to the CPTO, this role owns day-to-day people leadership, organizational design, workforce planning, performance management, engineering capacity, and cross-team delivery discipline. The Manager partners closely with the EVP of Product, Director of Product, EVP of Production Engineering, program leaders, and senior technical staff. Product leaders retain ownership of product outcomes and priorities; senior technical leaders retain architecture and domain authority; this role makes those functions more effective by creating clear accountability, healthy teams, and reliable execution.\n\nThis is a technical player-coach role rather than a coordination-only position. The Manager stays close to the work through design and code reviews, incident and support investigation, technical planning, and small unplanned contributions when appropriate. Planned roadmap work remains with the engineering teams. The Manager is also a hands-on owner of the Jira execution model across engineering efforts, helping teams maintain actionable tickets, healthy backlogs, visible dependencies, and credible delivery forecasts without turning process into an end in itself.\n\nSuccess in this role looks like engineers who receive useful coaching, senior engineers who deliver meaningful impact to the business and grow into effective leaders, product teams that understand what matters next, risks that surface early, and software that moves from prototype through production with predictable delivery, appropriate technical quality, and mission-user trust.\n\nDuties and Responsibilities\n\nPeople Leadership and Organization\n\nLead and develop senior engineers, engineering leads, and selected individual contributors through regular coaching, performance management, growth planning, and succession development.\nDesign sustainable reporting lines and team structures; lead hiring, onboarding, retention, workforce planning, and capability development for software engineering.\nAllocate engineering capacity across product, applied research, customer-funded, and internal efforts; resolve priority conflicts, reduce fragmentation, and surface portfolio tradeoffs to the CPTO.\n\nDelivery and Jira Operations\n\nOwn the software engineering operating rhythm across product efforts, including practical Jira standards, actionable backlogs, dependency management, release readiness, and escalation paths.\nPartner with Product and Program leaders to convert priorities and milestones into feasible plans, staffing assumptions, acceptance criteria, and credible delivery forecasts.\nUse flow, quality, and reliability data to identify bottlenecks and improve delivery; keep technical debt, risks, and commitments visible without using metrics as individual productivity scores.\n\nTechnical and Cross-Functional Leadership\n\nStay close to architecture, code, incidents, and technical planning; contribute to small unplanned work when useful without becoming the critical-path owner of planned roadmap features.\nPartner with Staff and Principal Engineers and the EVP of Production Engineering on architecture, security, DevSecOps, reliability, observability, testing, CI/CD, and transition from prototypes to supported products.\nSupport capture, estimation, staffing, customer technical exchanges, program reviews, and lightweight engineering governance for new and existing opportunities.\nMonitor organizational health, workload, and leadership capacity; provide the CPTO with decision-ready recommendations and continuously improve engineering practices, including secure AI-assisted development.\n\nQualifications\n\nRequired\n\n10+ years of progressive software engineering experience delivering production systems, including 5+ years of formal people management or engineering leadership.\nThe stated experience and education requirements describe the typical path to this level and are not a gate. Knowmadics will consider an equivalent combination of education, professional experience, and demonstrated skill, and makes exceptions for candidates who can evidence the scope, complexity, and judgment the role requires.\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.\nExperience leading multiple teams or an engineering organization of approximately 15 or more people through direct and indirect reports, including senior technical staff.\nStrong hands-on engineering judgment across distributed systems, APIs, data flows, containers, cloud or edge deployment, CI/CD, and secure software delivery; able to review designs and code and lead incident investigation.\nProven success hiring, coaching, evaluating, and retaining engineers; managing staffing across matrixed efforts; and operating Jira or a comparable platform for backlog quality, dependencies, forecasting, and delivery flow.\nStrong communication and judgment when balancing product, customer, security, reliability, and organizational tradeoffs in mission-critical or regulated environments.\nEligible to obtain a U.S. Security Clearance - U.S. Citizenship required\n\nStrongly Preferred\n\nExperience with DoD software delivery, ATO processes, DevSecOps, or secure software supply chains.\nExperience in a startup or scale-up environment with matrixed teams, platform or reliability engineering, developer-experience investments, or governed AI-assisted software development.\n\nWorking conditions\n\nEmployees may be called upon to participate in in-person meetings, trainings, or company functions at Knowmadics offices or other designated locations. Travel in support of business operations may also be required, and employees are expected to comply with these obligations as part of their position.\nRemote, with preference given to candidates located within approximately 40 miles of Wichita, KS; Lawton, OK; or Round Rock, TX. Relocation assistance may be negotiable for the right candidate.\nEstimated travel: 10-15 percent for customer meetings, government program reviews, demonstrations, exercises, industry events, partner engagements, and in-person collaboration.\nSome weekend or off-hours work may be required to support deployments, exercise windows, customer demonstrations, incident response, or operational deadlines.\nStandard business hours with flexibility to support distributed teams and customers across U.S. time zones.\n\nPhysical requirements\n\nMay include sitting or standing for extended periods, working with computers and technical equipment, occasional lifting or moving of materials and equipment up to 35 lbs, and travel to field, range, or demonstration environments where conditions may include outdoor weather, noise, and the operational tempo typical of defense exercises.\n\nDirect reports\n\nExpected to include approximately six to ten Senior Engineers, Staff Engineers, or Engineering Leads, plus selected software engineering individual contributors transferred from existing reporting lines. The role carries managerial accountability for an overall software engineering organization of roughly 20 to 25 people through direct and indirect reports. Span of control is expected to grow toward the upper end of this range as the organization scales and additional Engineering Leads are established; sustained spans above ten are treated as a signal to split the team rather than as a steady state. Final reporting assignments will be calibrated with the CPTO and HR as the organization is implemented.\n\nExperience with DoD software delivery, ATO processes, DevSecOps, or secure software supply chains.\nExperience in a startup or scale-up environment with matrixed teams, platform or reliability engineering, developer-experience investments, or governed AI-assisted software development.\n\nAll qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.","datePosted":"2026-09-01T10:45:10.185Z","dateModified":"2026-09-01T10:45:10.185Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Knowmadics","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Marienthal","addressRegion":"KS","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"c077dea35dbf5c8b3e84b772"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/c077dea35dbf5c8b3e84b772"}}