Engineer Manager, Network Solutions

Nexcess delivers specialized cloud solutions for organizations requiring both high performance and strict compliance. We support businesses globally, from agencies managing client sites to enterprises running critical operations. Our reputation is built on deep technical expertise and genuine client partnerships. Our team is dedicated to managing every environment with serious craft and consistent commitment.

About Network Solutions

Network Solutions engineers and maintains physical and virtual customer network products, including load balancing, switching, firewalls, VPN, and VPC, to connect and protect customer infrastructure.

The Role

As an Engineer Manager, you will lead and own an engineering team end-to-end, encompassing architecture design, delivery, and roadmap execution. This hands-on engineering position requires you to be fully accountable for your team's outcomes.

Beyond visible project work, your role involves optimizing the engineering process: defining monthly work scope, streamlining changes to production, integrating AI assistance, and minimizing non-engineering tasks.

How We Work

Our engineering philosophy prioritizes business alignment and impact. You will identify critical priorities, collaborate with Product to define scope, and deliver high-quality software predictably and reliably, avoiding incidents or customer escalations.

This is a highly hands-on role, with thin management layers. You will actively engage in technical work, including writing specifications, reviewing pull requests, utilizing AI tools daily, and contributing to code. Your technical judgment must remain current and informed.

Accountability for shipped code rests with the owner, regardless of its origin. In an AI-driven environment, your expertise will focus on precise specification and thorough verification of AI-generated code for correctness, security, and operability. Managerial accountability is heightened in this era.

You will foster a strong partnership with Product, collaboratively shaping the roadmap, translating business needs into achievable commitments, and clearly communicating trade-offs. Your primary goal is to enable business success through technology, process, and team leadership.

Your team will participate in an on-call rotation for the products it builds, and you will take your turn. Engineering is responsible for formally documenting and communicating risks and timelines for business acceptance.

What We'll Measure

Speed: Achieve DORA High, targeting Elite performance through engineering excellence and a performance-driven culture. You will establish a baseline, publish metrics, and drive continuous improvement.

Predictable, Reliable Delivery: Track planned versus delivered work monthly, ensuring early renegotiation of dates and a reduction in customer-facing defects and incident recurrence.

AI Adoption & Impact: Quantify the impact of AI integration through measurable AI-assisted outcomes.

What You'll Do

• Own your team's architecture design, delivery, and roadmap. Collaborate with Product to shape, commit to, and deliver the roadmap effectively.
• Drive engineering outcomes for Network Solutions' product portfolio, including physical and virtual networking, load balancing, switching, firewalls, VPN, and VPC. Develop a deep understanding of customers, architecture, dependencies, integrations, and operational risks. Ensure long-term product health and evolution.
• Maintain hands-on involvement: write specifications, review pull requests, and ship code. Your technical judgment on designs and estimates must be current.
• Actively utilize and promote AI tooling within your team, including agentic tooling, specification-first development, automated review, and sharing reusable skills.
• Scope and define work: transform roadmap items into estimated tasks, identify unknowns, manage monthly cycles with clear cut lines, and provide transparent status reporting.
• Proactively resolve cross-team engineering dependencies by collaborating directly with other managers to ensure timely delivery.
• Uphold high engineering standards to achieve DORA High performance. Identify and eliminate bottlenecks such as review latency, build time, environment issues, handoffs, and approval loops. Implement comprehensive testing, coverage gating, and evidence-based release decisions.
• Foster engineer growth through regular one-on-one meetings, personalized growth plans, and timely, direct feedback. Manage the end-to-end hiring process and maintain high standards.
• Take full ownership of operations: manage on-call rotations, document incidents with actionable closures, eliminate toil, and prevent single points of failure.

What You'll Bring

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including at least one year in formal or informal engineering leadership.
• Hands-on technical proficiency in Perl, PHP, React, Vue, relational databases (Postgres, MariaDB), firewall and load balancer configuration, VPN, HAProxy, nginx, switching and VLANs, and configuration management.
• Demonstrated current hands-on experience, including recent code contributions, ability to review AI-generated code, and a commitment to continued technical engagement.
• Proven, quantifiable experience with hands-on AI-assisted engineering, demonstrating genuine team adoption and a clear understanding of its limitations and verification needs.
• Evidence of measurably improving team speed, including knowledge of DORA metrics or equivalents, bottleneck identification, and implemented solutions.
• Track record of delivering and modernizing software on schedule, utilizing collaborative scoping and data-driven forecasting. Experience operating production on-call rotations, managing end-to-end hiring, and leading engineers across different time zones.
• Required: Experience in managed hosting, cloud services, or other high-availability service environments.

Work Environment

The physical demands outlined below are representative of those required for successful job performance. Reasonable accommodations may be made for individuals with disabilities.

• Regularly required to speak and hear.
• Regularly required to use hands for keyboarding, gross, and fine manipulation.
• Works at a desk and computer screen for extended periods.
• Works in a traditional climate-controlled office or from home.
• Operates in a highly demanding environment with diverse challenges, deadlines, and employee interactions.

Disclaimer

This job description provides a summary of typical functions and is not an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, tasks, or duties. Additional duties may be assigned. Liquid Web Inc. reserves the right to modify, interpret, or apply this description to support organizational needs. This description does not create an employment contract; employment remains "at will."

Equal Employment Opportunity Policy: Liquid Web is dedicated to providing equal employment opportunities regardless of age, color, disability, gender, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, military status, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.