Engineering Manager, Platform Engineering

Why Work Here

• Headquarters is in Charlotte, NC
• Recently expanded to nearshore
• isolved ranked for SMB Payroll in 2023 Sapient Report
• Voted top places to work in USA 2025

Summary/objective

The Engineering Manager for Platform Engineering leads one or more software engineering teams within the isolved Platform Pod. This is a player-coach role. You will manage people, delivery, and process while staying close enough to the technical work to earn the respect of the senior engineers you lead. You own the health, growth, and output of your teams, and you partner with product management and architecture to turn roadmap into shipped software.

This is a hands-on management role, not a distant one. You are close enough to the code to do a useful review, spot when an engineer is heading down the wrong path, and hold your own in an architecture discussion. Your team includes senior and Principal-level developers, and your credibility with them comes from sound technical judgment as much as from strong management. We use AI-assisted development as a standard part of how engineering teams work at isolved, and you are expected to champion adoption and model the right behaviors across your teams.

Core Job Duties

Team Management

• Maintaining deep knowledge of team health, sprint status, individual performance, blockers, and delivery risks without waiting to be asked.
• Actively engaging in ceremonies and technical discussions, asking the questions that surface hidden risk and modeling the engagement expected from the team.
• Coaching engineers through skill gaps, managing underperformance early and directly, and building a team culture where high standards and psychological safety coexist.
• Guiding teams through complexity and uncertainty, maintaining momentum and morale even when priorities shift.
• Reporting on delivery risks, capacity, and team health with honesty and data, translating technical details into business impact and surfacing bad news early.

Work Management

• Operating as a true partner to product management, collaborating on quarterly and sprint planning, grounding commitments in realistic capacity, and playing an active role in shaping priorities.
• Proactively identifying and removing blockers before they become crises, and managing dependencies across teams and workstreams.
• Owning sprint readout quality, providing meaningful status, root cause analysis, and concrete mitigation plans for anything at risk.

Individual Management

• Conducting regular 1-on-1s with all direct reports, identifying skill gaps, and providing coaching that supports growth across technical and leadership paths.
• Managing underperformance proactively through observation, metrics, and delivery data, and following a structured process from first concern to resolution.
• Hiring, onboarding, and developing engineers, and conducting performance evaluations that are timely, constructive, and promote career growth.

Technical & Business Leadership

• Maintaining technical credibility through engagement in code reviews, architecture discussions, and proof-of-concept work, being honest about what you know versus what you need to learn.
• Understanding the features and systems your teams are building well enough to identify technical risk and have a meaningful conversation with any engineer about their work.
• Driving AI-assisted development adoption across your teams, championing agentic coding tools and holding the bar on meaningful adoption rather than surface-level compliance.
• Helping teams understand the business context for their work, connecting engineering decisions to business outcomes and ensuring engineers see the bigger picture beyond their current sprint.

Job Complexity

Manages one or more software engineering teams within the Platform Pod, with accountability for delivery commitments, team health, and quality standards. Works on complex issues where analysis requires evaluation of technical, people, and delivery factors. Erroneous decisions or failure to achieve results will cause delays in schedules and may impact dependent teams and workstreams.

Experience

Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related engineering experience, including experience managing engineers, with a Bachelor's degree.

Minimum Qualifications

• Proven experience managing a software engineering team of roughly 8 to 15 reports, including senior engineers
• A genuine player-coach profile, hands-on enough to earn technical respect and not removed from the day-to-day work
• A strong delivery track record in an agile environment, whether Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid
• Demonstrated ability to coach engineers, manage performance, and develop careers
• Demonstrated use of AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or similar) within a team's workflow
• Strong skills in:
  1. Technical fluency across a modern web and .NET stack, sufficient to do a useful code review
  2. Reasoning about architecture, tradeoffs, and technical risk
  3. Agile delivery across Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid
• Experience with:
  1. Hiring, onboarding, and performance management
  2. Partnering with product management on roadmap and delivery
  3. Coaching senior and Principal-level engineers
  4. Azure cloud services, CI/CD pipelines, and Azure DevOps or similar tooling

Experience with the following a plus

• Leading modernization, migration, or platform initiatives
• C#, .NET / ASP.NET Core, and Azure
• HCM, payroll, or enterprise SaaS domain experience
• Capacity planning and roadmap shaping with product management
• Scaling teams during rapid hiring periods

Physical Demands

Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer. Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds.

Travel Required

Yes, minimal travel may be required (up to 5%) for occasional workshops or team events.

Work Authorization

Employee must be legally authorized to work in the United States.

FLSA Classification

Exempt

Location

Remote or hybrid, United States.

Internal Job Title

Engineering Manager

About isolved

isolved is a leading provider of human capital management (HCM) solutions that combines modern technology with expert services and support. Purpose-built for People Heroes™, isolved gives HR, payroll and benefits leaders the tools and insights to streamline operations and deliver employee experiences that matter. isolved People Cloud™ is a connected HCM platform with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics that brings together HR, payroll, benefits, workforce management and talent management in one experience. Built on a legacy of 40 years in the market, isolved is trusted by more than 200,000 employers and used by 9 million U.S. employees, representing about one in 20 American workers. Visit www.isolvedhcm.com.

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