Engineering Manager
About Toptal
Toptal is a global network of top talent in business, design, and technology that enables companies to scale their teams, on-demand. With $200+ million in annual revenue and team members based around the globe, Toptal is the world’s largest fully remote workforce.
We take the best elements of virtual teams and combine them with a support structure that encourages innovation, social interaction, and fun. We see no borders, move at a fast pace, and are never afraid to break the mold.
Job Summary:
You will be part of a team working on a newly launched business unit, delivering real value to the end-users, and working closely with the business. We’re developing advanced data and AI tools that empower companies to make smarter decisions and move faster in an increasingly intelligent world. You will have the opportunity to help shape this new AI platform. Every bit of work you do will have a direct impact on the company’s revenue.
Our stack is focused heavily on Next.js, Node (NestJS), React, and Supabase. We’re seeking a hands-on Engineering Manager with strong technical depth to lead a high-velocity team. You should be deeply fluent in AI-assisted development workflows and push the team to stay on the cutting edge of how AI transforms software engineering.
As an Engineering Manager at Toptal, you will work with Engineers, Designers, Product Managers, Architects, and our Executive team to develop and deliver the highest-quality products to market. You will lead an Engineering team, shaping it for success in terms of product and technical excellence.
This is a remote position. We do not offer visa sponsorship or assistance. Resumes and communication must be submitted in English.
Responsibilities:
The following information is intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or required skills.
You will lead a team of highly skilled professionals to create and maintain world-class products used by our users externally and internally. Among other responsibilities:
- Set goals for your team and team members.
- Understand the big picture of what your team is doing and why.
- Inspire and motivate your team towards maximum happiness and output.
- Communicate with stakeholders regularly and proactively.
- Communicate proactively with your Product Manager and their team.
- Create a productive and enjoyable work environment for the team.
- Establish feedback loops in your team and give your team members immediate feedback.
- Participate in regular performance reviews.
- Facilitate technical discussions and push for high code quality by frequent code reviews.
- Facilitate and, when necessary, resolve technical and interpersonal discussions.
- Ensure the overall output quality of the team.
- Mentor team members and collaborate with them on personal and career growth.
- Be aware of engineering-wide technical and people initiatives and be open to help if necessary.
- Bring up difficult and/or systemic challenges and blockers to the attention of your manager.
- As an Engineering Manager, you are first and foremost a leader, not a developer. This doesn’t mean, though, that you don’t stay up to date with programming-related topics and make sure that you get your hands dirty regularly.
- Lead the recruiting and hiring process of the team.
- Track progress, assess risks, coordinate delivery, and actively communicate contingency and mitigation plans for the team.
- Apply system-analyst techniques and procedures, including consulting with users to determine hardware, software, or systems functional specifications.
In the first week, expect to:
- Start on the team by being introduced to Toptal and its culture, meeting colleagues, and getting access to documentation and repositories.
In the first month, expect to:
- Complete onboarding, having pushed code to production, and be introduced to your future teammates.
In the first three months, expect to:
- Be working with your team and understand its mission and roadmap.
- Conduct regular 1:1s with your teammates, and begin to understand their strengths and aspirations.
- Be leading your team’s efforts from planning to delivery.
In the first six months, expect to:
- Build a deep understanding of the mission, constraints, and capabilities of your team and squad.
- Develop relationships with Engineers, Team Leads, and other colleagues to maximize cross-collaboration whenever beneficial.
- Contribute improvement suggestions at an Engineering-wide and even company-wide level.
In the first year, expect to:
- Have led the shipping of at least one major feature having product-wide impact.
- Have defined yearly goals and objectives with and for your team.
Qualifications and Job Requirements:
- 7+ years of experience working with back-end, front-end technologies, and databases.
- Solid grasp of object-oriented programming, databases (PostgreSQL/Supabase), clean code, development, and automated testing methodologies.
- 2+ years of previous experience leading an Engineering team.
- Good track record of delivering successful products as an engineer and engineering manager.
- Experience managing small teams with high autonomy and low process overhead.
- Ability to weigh implementation time against performance, failure tolerance, security, and long-term maintenance.
- Experience with data labeling, media processing (video/audio), or PDF manipulation is a plus.
- Familiarity with LangGraph or LangChain and related technologies is a plus.
- Familiarity with Redis, Kafka, and related caching and queueing technologies is a plus.
- Familiarity with NextJS, React, JavaScript, TypeScript, and GraphQL is a plus.
- Experience designing and building AI Agents, MCP servers, and data classification components for training LLM’s is a plus.
- Experience with cloud-native infrastructure on platforms such as GCP or AWS is a plus.
- Ability to evaluate technical architecture trade-offs in real-time during design discussions.
- Strong code review skills — able to distinguish good from bad code and articulate why.
- Active, demonstrated experience as an AI-first engineer. Push the boundaries of development. Use of AI development tools (Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) in your own workflow and try to delegate/automate repetitive tasks using agents
- Genuine curiosity about LLMs and AI-assisted engineering.
- Strong communication skills — clear writing, direct feedback, effective facilitation.
- You must be a world-class individual contributor to thrive at Toptal. You will not be here just to tell other people what to do.
