Associate Engineering Manager

About OpenSesame

OpenSesame's mission is to help develop the world's most productive and admired workforces. While it appears to most people that we just sell training courses (over 40,000 of them), what we really offer is the opportunity for companies to upgrade the skills of each of their employees. We are at a pivotal time in our growth as we diversify the ways we drive revenue. We've expanded our product offering dramatically, and have a growing network of partners that is developing into a vibrant channel. Our customer base has high satisfaction ratings and there is room to grow our retention even more. To learn more, visit www.opensesame.com/about 

About the Job

We are seeking an Associate Engineering Manager who will lead and support a team of engineers focused on Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions. In this role, you will help your team develop the context, skills, and process needed to consistently deliver valuable work with a high level of quality, accuracy and reliability.  

“Be able to deliver what you say you can deliver when you commit to it.”

Performance Objectives:

In your first 90 days, success will mean building trust with your distributed engineering team and key stakeholders, understanding team strengths and challenges, aligning delivery practices with organizational values, and developing a system-level view to improve effectiveness.

People:

• Build strong relationships with a distributed team of seven engineers across timezones and varying experience levels.
• Conduct 1:1s to understand each team member’s career goals, motivations, frustrations, and strengths.
• Understand your teams’ current processes.
• Engage with stakeholders to understand expectations, friction points, and dependencies related to IAM initiatives.
• Collaborate with the team lead on team members’ career development spreadsheets.
• Hire full-time employees as appropriate

Product:

• Understand your teams vision, current mission and backlog priorities.
• Understand how the team’s deliverables fit into the big picture of the organization.
• Understand how to use your team products.
• Partner effectively with the team’s Product Manager to align on execution, drive clarity in planning, and enable continuous improvement across the IAM portfolio.

Process:

• Work with the Senior Engineering Manager to develop a plan that strengthens the team’s delivery capability, sustainability, and technical resilience.
• Ensure there is a balanced backlog planning that includes time for innovation, experimentation, and paying down technical debt.
• Establish yourself as the primary point of contact for Engineering stakeholders, shielding the team from unproductive interruptions and ensuring they can focus on delivery.
• Set up your development environment and review the team’s codebase to understand architecture, technical decisions, and areas for investment.
• Begin applying systems thinking to understand how team outcomes are shaped by processes, culture, and environment.

By six months, you will be a trusted IAM team leader, delivering product outcomes, improving engineering quality, supporting your engineers’ growth, and contributing to peer collaboration and company-wide improvements.

People:

• Maintain awareness of team dynamics and team members’ interpersonal relationships across your distributed team
• Provide coaching, mentoring and/or mediation as needed to continuously improve your teams’ team dynamics.
• Provide or source training, coaching, and/or mentoring for teams’ and team members’ weak spots.
• Tailor your leadership approach to individuals’ learning styles and strengths.

Product:

• Ensure the team has the context needed to make excellent decisions without your active involvement.
• Partner closely with the Product Manager to improve grooming, planning, and prioritization workflows; track and improve delivery predictability.
• Strike a balance between shielding the team from inappropriate stakeholder interactions and enabling the team to work directly with stakeholders to understand their needs.
• Advocate for IAM initiatives that align with organization strategy; communicate trade-offs clearly to stakeholders and senior leadership.
• Share transparent, realistic views of capacity and risks

Process: 

• Optimize the team’s forecasting, and definition of done to improve planning accuracy and delivery confidence
• Remove yourself as a bottleneck to team decision making.
• Identify paths for continuously improving developer experience, tooling and internal quality
• Create opportunities for cross-team pollination and shared growth.

Management Team:

• Build strong peer relationships with other engineering managers; understand their teams’ needs, opportunities, and points of collaboration.
• Collaborate on improvement efforts that span beyond your own team

By the end of your first year, you will be a reliable and collaborative member of the engineering management team, contributing beyond your immediate team while continuing to grow your leadership influence.

• Be a resource that other managers turn to for advice and guidance.
• In partnership with Product Management, you’ll help drive better execution on cross-team efforts.
• As you continue to grow, you’ll contribute insights to help engineering leadership identify and address systemic challenges, particularly those impacting collaboration with internal business stakeholders.

Become the Best Version of Yourself

We want OpenSesame to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve and the world we live in. We know that a variety of perspectives and voices strengthen our ability to deliver the spark of learning to everyone. We hold ourselves accountable to create more diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities through continuous learning, personal growth, and working to support our customers. We welcome you to bring your authentic self to our team and grow beyond your expectations.

Location: This position can be based anywhere in the US. We operate as a remote-first company, and invest in mandatory all-company meetings several times a year in addition to required team travel as necessary.

Performance Driven: We're looking for self-starters with a track record of delivering excellent results, but we're highly selective about who we hire. We don't focus on typical job requirements, instead, we're interested in specific examples from your past experiences. All positions can be based anywhere in the US, and require up to 15 days of travel per year, with senior management and leadership teams requiring up to 35 days.

Compensation: The base salary for this position generally ranges between $192,000 and $208,000 depending on experience, and is bonus eligible. At OpenSesame, we offer a comprehensive benefits package to employees upon hire, including professional development, ISOs, health insurance, 401(k) matching, and paid time off. 

Equal Employment Opportunity: OpenSesame is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer that values and welcomes diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of various legally protected characteristics, including criminal history, and strive to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. We prioritize safety and security and may use your information accordingly, and you can contact us for assistance or accommodations during the job application process. 

Pay Transparency: At OpenSesame, we prioritize pay transparency, fairness, and equity to create a positive and inclusive work environment, regularly reviewing our compensation practices to align with our values and goals. We provide competitive and fair compensation to our employees based on their skills, experience, and performance.

CPRA (California Candidates): When you submit your application, OpenSesame may collect and use your personal information in accordance with our privacy policy and the CPRA. This may include personal details and employment history, and will only be used for employment-related purposes. We may share this information with third-party service providers, but we will not sell it to third parties. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us, and for more information on your rights under the CPRA, refer to our privacy policy or the California Attorney General's website.