Software Engineering Manager

The Company

At Edovo, our mission is to help everyone connected to incarceration build better lives. We’ve created a secure digital platform to expand education behind bars that supports the vocational, rehabilitation and communication needs of the 2.2 million people in jails and prisons. We currently serve close to 2 million users annually with access to thousands of hours of self-guided learning materials. Edovo offers courses in subjects ranging from basic literacy and GED to career exploration and cognitive behavioral therapy. We’re also building tools to keep people in touch with jobs, social services, friends, and family. Our team is committed to supporting opportunities for justice-involved people.

Don’t take it just from us. Awards, publications, grants, and partnerships all around the country have recognized the momentum and impact of Edovo. A select few: Global EdTech Startup Champion in London out of 1,000+ competitors; GIIRS Platinum Rating for social impact; MacArthur Foundation Grant Award Winner; Forbes article feature; Chicago Community Trust grant award winner; SXSW Civic Tech Innovation Pitch Competition runner-up; Chicago Innovation "Up and Comer" Award winner; and so much more.

Check out a brief picture of our program from the perspective of the people who use it. Visit Edovo on Vimeo for more.

The Team

At Edovo we’re a tight-knit bunch of engineers and product owners with a passion for solving hard problems for the greater good.  We’re involved in every step of the product development process with deep ownership from first ideas through to delivery.  We’re agile- but we adopt and adapt the many individual practices and tools that support our culture and values rather than follow “one true way”.  We’re unafraid of new technology and happily evaluate each on its merits to the organization and our team.  That said, we prefer simple solutions and tried-and-true technologies over immature bleeding edge tech.  

We work across many different technologies and team members own projects end-to-end. Our stack includes Java, JavaScript, MySQL, and other technologies all operating on AWS services. We are heavily involved in the planning process and work closely with our stakeholders. We happily pull in a peer when we need a pair to get through a tough problem or just for a second pair of eyes. We carefully balance new development with investments in quality of life and efficiency for ourselves.

We believe that diversity of background and experience is key and work hard to build teams that reflect this. 

The Role

We're hiring a Software Engineering Manager to own both the product-layer coordination and the people leadership currently split between our Tech Leads, Product Managers, and CTO. This is a hybrid role by design: you'll manage engineers directly (1:1s, growth, hiring, performance) while also taking on the backlog ownership, scoping, and stakeholder management that a technical organization needs to stay coordinated. Your peers will include Engineering Managers across our Product and Infrastructure teams.

The team you lead works across platform, data, and support functions. This requires holistic, system-level thinking: you need to understand how these functions connect to each other and to the business, not just manage each in isolation.

This role requires real people-management responsibilities in addition to actively owning requirements gathering, backlog prioritization, and internal stakeholder communication.

What You'll Own

Tech Stream: Discovering and prioritizing work such as modernization, migrations, optimizations, unplanned technical work, and partner integrations.

Data: Considering the long-term health of our data and data pipelines as well as triaging and coordinating inbound requests to drive the evolution of internal and external reporting tools.

Primary Tech Support: Ensuring production issues, incidents, and partner-facing technical escalations are triaged, owned, and resolved with clear communication to affected stakeholders.

What You'll Do

People & Team Leadership

• Hold regular 1:1s with all engineers on your team, fostering growth, engagement, and alignment
• Conduct performance reviews and provide specific coaching where reports need to grow
• Participate in headcount planning, hiring, and career development for your teams
• Guide goal-setting for your teams, connecting individual goals to business and technical needs
• Support any Tech Leads reporting to you with guidance on technical decisions and project plans

Product & Backlog Ownership

• Maintain and prioritize backlogs across Tech Stream, Data, and Primary Tech Support in Jira
• Lead scoping conversations with engineers to size, sequence, and communicate technical initiatives
• Manage inbound requests from internal stakeholders and translate them into well-defined, prioritized work
• Represent these functions in cross-functional meetings
• Align technical roadmaps with Product teams so everyone builds with shared context
• Communicate project status, blockers, and decisions clearly to the broader organization

Technical & Architectural Judgment

• Guide architecture and design decisions to keep engineering work matched to the needs of the business and the product.
• Provide technical guidance to product owners and stakeholders on system/feature design trade-offs
• Understand the systems you oversee well enough to help research problems, debug critical systems, and review code
• Continually evaluate and refine development standards and processes

AI Adoption & Tooling

• Guide your teams in experimenting with and integrating AI tools and AI-powered workflows into day-to-day development
• Evaluate AI/automation opportunities within the team and coordinate initiatives from scoping through shipping
• Stay current on AI-assisted development practices and help the team adopt them responsibly, including where they intersect with Edovo's compliance and data-handling requirements

What We're Looking For

Required:

• Experience managing engineers directly, including hiring, performance reviews, career development, and 1:1s
• Proven ability to own a technical backlog and make prioritization trade-offs across competing demands
• Experience planning and prioritizing modernization and migration efforts.
• Comfort working across multiple technical functions (e.g., infrastructure, data, application development) rather than a single specialty
• Strong communicator who can translate technical work for nontechnical stakeholders and business context for engineers
• Experience coordinating across teams with competing priorities
• Clear, structured written and verbal communication. You write tickets engineers can act on and provide updates that stakeholders can understand
• Experience guiding teams in adopting AI-assisted development tools or workflows
• Experience with partner or third-party integration work

Nice to Have:

• Experience in a startup or mission-driven organization
• Familiarity with edtech, healthtech, or similarly regulated/complex product environments
• Exposure to compliance or data privacy requirements (SOC2, CJIS, HIPAA, etc.)

Application Requirements

All applications must include a current resume and a cover letter sharing why you're interested in working with Edovo. Applications lacking a cover letter will not be reviewed.

Other Details

• Work Authorization: Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. This position is not eligible for employment-based visa sponsorship, now or in the future.
• Location: Remote; however, candidates must currently reside in the United States.
• Salary: Commensurate with experience
• Department: Role reports to the CTO
• Travel Requirements: Up to 15%, including bi-annual company retreats in the Spring and Fall
• Physical Demands: No excessive physical demands required

Edovo is an impact-driven nonprofit organization. We offer our employees a collaborative culture in a remote working environment, unlimited PTO, and paid benefits for team members and their families. We hire tenacious, innovative, and passionate people and give them opportunities to grow and succeed.

Teams with bold missions need diverse ideas to generate the most impact. For that reason, Edovo is committed to building diverse and inclusive work spaces. We don’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. And yes, we believe in second chances.