Software Engineering Team Manager

Job ID: 2615319

Location: Remote Work, AL, US

Date Posted: 2026-08-06

Category: Software

Subcategory: SW Engineer

Schedule: Full-Time

Shift: Day Job

Travel: Yes - 10% of the time

Minimum Clearance Required: None

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: Secret

Potential for Remote Work: ORA_REMOTE

Description

SAIC is seeking a Software Engineering Team Manager to join the Joint Range Extension (JRE) software development team. This is a remote role within the U.S. You'll be leading a fully remote team that is spread across the continental United States.

JRE is a combat-proven datalink gateway that plays a vital role in the defense of the U.S. and our allies by extending the reach of tactical data across the battlespace and around the globe. As the manager for this team, you'll be directly responsible for the growth and effectiveness of the engineers who build it. You will manage an established, high-performing team of 8 to 10 software engineers spanning a range of experience levels, career stages, and specialties, within the larger JRE software development organization, working closely with engineering leadership, product management, software architecture, and systems engineering.

You will report to the manager of JRE software development, who is bringing this role on to put dedicated leadership closer to the engineers. The team's engineers are your direct reports, and you own their reviews, their development, and their day-to-day leadership. Expect real latitude in how you lead them, a manager who wants decisions made close to the work, and a growing share of hiring as you establish yourself.

We are looking for a leader first. You should be able to hold your own in technical discussions and earn the respect of senior engineers, but your primary craft is people: developing them, aligning them, and clearing what stands in their way.

You are accountable for the team that delivers the work, including its capability and engineering practices. Product management sets the team's priorities and a dedicated product owner runs sprint planning, and both will look to you as a close partner in that work.

JOB DUTIES

People Leadership and Development

Hold consistent, substantive one-on-ones, build a development plan with each engineer, and create the assignments and opportunities that move them toward it

Give direct, timely, specific feedback in a way that makes clear you are invested in the person receiving it, and ask for the same about your own leadership

Own performance management for your reports: goal setting, reviews, compensation input, recognition, honest intervention when performance falls short, and advocacy in promotion calibration

Coach rather than rescue. Resist the pull to solve problems that would teach someone more if you left them to it

Develop and sponsor the team's future leads and senior technical contributors

Team Culture and Engagement

Build the trust and psychological safety that let engineers admit mistakes, ask for help, disagree openly, and treat setbacks as information rather than blame, none of which happens on a remote team without deliberate effort

Connect the team's day-to-day work to the mission it serves, so every engineer understands why their work matters to the warfighter and to the program

Encourage disagreement about ideas and drive it to real commitment instead of false consensus, running decisions so the best thinking on the team surfaces

Watch how work is distributed so the team's pace stays sustainable, and notice when someone is isolated, disengaged, or struggling

Build an inclusive team by setting norms that work across time zones and working styles: protected overlap hours, written updates that don't require everyone online at once, fair meeting times, and decisions recorded where people can find them later

Delivery and Execution

Own the team's ability to execute against the priorities and sprint plan it is given: staffing, skill coverage, workflow, and the engineering practices that keep delivery predictable, including code review, test automation, CI/CD, definition of done, and release readiness

Give product management and the product owner a clear read on the team's capacity and staffing risk, and take part in sprint planning and the team's other ceremonies, coaching the team to own its commitments

Relay what the team is seeing about technical debt and modernization needs to product management, the architects, and program leadership

Remove impediments, dependencies, and organizational friction on the team's behalf, and surface schedule, staffing, and technical risks early with options attached

Take part in incident reviews and post-mortems, keeping the analysis blameless, and hold the team to its program obligations for security, compliance, and documentation

Collaboration and Communication

Communicate candidly in both directions: leadership's intent and context to the team, and an accurate, well-organized picture of the team's work, concerns, and needs to your manager

Contribute the team's perspective alongside your manager, the architects, product management, and systems engineering, and build strong working relationships with program management, quality, security, and government stakeholders

Navigate high-stakes, emotionally charged, or contentious conversations, whether with individuals, across teams, or with customers, and resolve interpersonal and cross-team conflict early and directly

Run effective meetings and write clearly, explaining technical concepts in terms non-technical audiences can follow and defaulting to writing over meeting when that serves a distributed team better

Hiring and Team Building

Partner with your manager on hiring for the team: interviewing, evaluating candidates, and keeping strong ones engaged, taking on more of it over time

Contribute to the team's interview process and hiring bar, weighing how a candidate works with others alongside their technical ability

Lead onboarding so new engineers reach real contribution quickly and feel part of the team, and advise on team composition, skill gaps, and structure as the program's needs change

Qualifications

REQUIREMENTS

Credentials and Education

A Bachelors degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field, with 9+ years of relevant experience, 7+ years for a Master's, or 4+ years for a Doctorate; relevant experience will be considered in lieu of degree

3+ years of that experience in direct people management or formal team leadership of software engineers

Must be able to obtain a Secret clearance or higher after start

Leadership and Management Qualifications

Demonstrated experience directly managing software engineers, including performance reviews, career development, difficult performance conversations, and the discretion personnel matters require, with specific examples of people who grew, were promoted, or took on greater scope under your leadership

Demonstrated experience managing a distributed or fully remote engineering team across multiple time zones: building trust and cohesion without in-person contact, catching performance or morale problems early, and designing how the team communicates and decides rather than letting it happen by default

Experience managing engineers within a larger engineering organization, reporting to a senior manager and working alongside architecture, product, and systems engineering counterparts, with the judgment to know what you decide, what you escalate, and what you bring forward for alignment

Proven ability to sustain a culture of trust, accountability, and high standards, giving and receiving candid feedback without damaging relationships and holding a high bar with genuine care for the individual

Skill in facilitating and resolving high-stakes conversations and competing interests, with the written and verbal communication strength that leading a distributed team demands

Delivery and Technical Qualifications

Experience leading software teams delivering complex, mission-critical, or high-reliability systems

Experience partnering closely with product management or a product owner on capacity, staffing, and delivery risk

Professional software engineering background with enough depth to earn the credibility of senior engineers, take part in design discussions, evaluate technical trade-offs and risk, and recognize when technical debt or design decisions are hurting the team's throughput

Working fluency with modern software engineering practices (version control workflows, code review, test automation, CI/CD) and with agile, iterative delivery, including the judgment to adapt process to context rather than apply it ceremonially

Familiarity with distributed systems concepts, secure development practices, and quality attributes such as reliability, performance, maintainability, and operability

DESIRED SKILLS

Familiarity with the defense/DoD program environment, including working with government customers, program management, and compliance obligations such as FAR, DISA STIGs, and NIST SP 800-171

Hands-on background with the Java platform, including Java and JVM languages such as Kotlin or Scala

Experience leading teams through significant modernization or refactoring efforts

Formal training, coaching credentials, or continued study in leadership and management

Active contributions to the engineering leadership community through mentoring, writing, or speaking

Target salary range: $120,001 - $160,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.