Engineering Manager

We're looking for an experienced engineering manager to join the team and help us bring independent open source publishing software to the world. Full-time · Remote

Hey there! We're looking for a new member to join the Ghost team, maybe that's you?

We're a non-profit organisation on a mission to create modern, independent publishing technology to power the future of online journalism. This is not a rocket-ship. You won't find any unicorn glitter or exponential curves around here, just a real company with a sustainable business which has been profitable from year 1 and has been growing healthily ever since. Currently our annual revenue is$9,000,000+. We're very transparent about our mission and our metrics, you canread all about us. Ghost is a full stack web application for running independent publications. It9;s one of the most popular modern open source projects in the world, and is used in production by tens of thousands of websites and companies. Chances are you've already visited and read sites which run on Ghost! Our users range from renowned publications like404 Media, Platformer,Tangle News, to prominent tech companies like YCombinator, First Round Review, Cloudflare and Kickstarter, and many, many more.

What we are looking for

For this position, we9re looking for an experienced people leader with a learning mindset and a strong software engineering background who is based in the Central or Eastern U.S. time zones.This role is accountable for improving the speed, reliability, and predictability with which teams deliver value to production - and for intervening when delivery slows down. Teams at Ghost are typically made up of 2-4 product engineers, often collaborating with designers and SREs. The role we're hiring for here will be responsible for managing the engineers on one or more of our teams, helping to plan work in collaboration with our product colleagues, and working directly with our engineers on the day-to-day challenges of delivering valuable software to production. We9re looking for an Engineering Manager who cares deeply about people and feels uncomfortable when teams are moving slower than they should - someone who actively looks to improve flow, reduce friction, and increase momentum without burning people out. We value healthy impatience: a bias toward action, learning through shipping, and making today a little better than yesterday. We prefer small, fast experiments over prolonged analysis or waiting for perfect alignment. Ghost is a full-stack, open source JavaScript web application. The primary technologies on the backend are Node.js/MySQL8, while our front-end stack is a mixture of Ember.js and an increasing amount of React. Any familiarity with our stack will be an advantage for someone applying for this position. Here are a few examples of the work you9ll be doing:

• Continuously improve the rate at which your teams ship meaningful changes to production
• Reduce cycle time, handoffs, and avoidable waiting
• Help engineers break large, slow work into smaller, faster feedback loops
• Chatting regularly 1:1 with engineers, listening to their concerns, making sure they9re feeling engaged and able to make progress, and providing specific feedback on performance 6 both the good and the not-so-good
• Mentoring product engineers to help them grow and become the best engineers they9re capable of becoming.
• Use qualitative and quantitative signals (e.g. cycle time, work-in-progress, deployment frequency, incident trends) to understand where teams are stuck and where to intervene
• Coordinating internal documentation and guides to make sure that our bus factor is healthy, and new team members can be onboarded easily
• Working with support and product leadership to determine our appetite for addressing our prioritized bugs and issues
• Participating in the planning process by soliciting context for your teams and surfacing relevant information to the rest of the company
• Surfacing coordination/collaboration challenges with other teams and working with peers and leadership to continuously improve how we work as a company
• Participating in our incident response process as a coordinator of major product issues, following up on actions and ensuring they9re seen through to resolution
• Alongside our leadership team, hire and onboard new programmers: filtering resumes, conducting interviews,evolving our hiring process

People who are highly self-motivated and great at written communication tend to do best at Ghost. The majority of our team is made up of former founders,freelancersand self-starters who are confidentand comfortable working independentlyand getting things done. This role would be very well suited to someone who is a current Engineering Managerand a former Software Engineer with experience delivering software consistent with the Twelve-Factor methodology. At Ghost,9re excited about AI as a way to do more for our mission,9re value Engineering Managers who help teams turn that excitement into practical improvements in how they work. This role may not be a good fit if you:

• Are uncomfortable applying pressure when delivery slows down
• Prefer stable, steady-state processes over continuously improving ones
• See pace and urgency as primarily the team s responsibility rather than your own
• Believe that caring about people and expecting high performance are in tension
• Are more comfortable facilitating discussion than driving change

What it's like to work here:

In 2020, a large number of companies became 'remote' for the first time... Micro-managing people... from a distance. Ghost has been fully remote for more than a decade... Since 2013 we've crafted a calm working environment based on trust & autonomy. Most people have 1 or 2 video calls per week; choose their own hours; have plenty of time for deep/focused work on their own terms. Our two most fundamental values are freedom & responsibility; you'll be given plenty of both. We measure outcomes rather than hours worked. This is not a fledgling tech startup forcing overtime; no hustle or grind here; we believe work should enable your life — so encourage reasonable schedules & solid sleep. We value diversity; team members speak 15 languages; varied backgrounds including single/married/parents; actively seek different perspectives & experiences; women & minorities especially encouraged.

Compensation & Location

• $160,190,000 USD (final offer based on experience & interview performance)
• Location requirement: Must be based in Central or Eastern U.S. time zones

On top of that:

All jobs at Ghost come with

default 💵 Competitive salary Based on role/skill/experience/location. default 🌍 Work from anywhere Home office or nomad lifestyle; everything online; wifi needed only. default 💻 Hardware Brand new Macbook + office workspace setup budget. default 🏢 Co-working Help paying if preferred workspace outside home needed. default 📚 Continue your personal development Budget for conferences/courses/books purchase. default ✈️ Worldwide team trips Recent trips: UK/Dubai/Thailand/Spain. default 📅 4-day work weeks Office closed Fridays! default 🏝 Generous paid vacation Minimum 2 week break encouraged (or forced in December). default 👶 Paid parental leave Generous fully paid leave when welcoming new family member(s). default 📈 Performance reviews Annual review aligned with market rates so pay grows over time. default 🐶 Dog friendly office? No physical office but feel free working alongside pets (dogs/cats). default # Who you'll be working with Erik 🇺🇸 Engineering default Hannah 🇬🇧 CTO default Peter 🇺🇸 Product

How to apply 🚀

Typical hiring process: Step 1: Application review against team needs Step 2: Informal video call with operations team member Step 3: Technical video call with hiring manager + another team member Step 4: Paid trial project (20–30 hours) Step 5: Final interview reviewing trial project Step 6: Offer 🎉 Many applications received; real humans review each carefully; women & minorities especially encouraged. Apply now

Not the right position for you?

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