Engineering Manager (m/f/d)

About Superchat

At Superchat, we're rebuilding how businesses talk to their customers. The phone call, the contact form, the support ticket: all of it is being replaced by messaging and AI. We're building the platform that runs underneath.

Founded in 2020, Superchat has become the platform of choice for 10,000+ businesses worldwide, from globally recognized brands like Allianz, Auto1, Enpal, Danone, and GASAG to the small businesses, dental practices, and one-person startups that need to look bigger than they are. Today, millions of messages flow through Superchat every single day.

We started as a unified inbox: one place for every channel a customer might pick, WhatsApp, email, SMS, Instagram. Then ChatGPT happened, and the second chapter began: AI agents that respond across chat, email, and voice at the quality of the best human teams.

We're 100 people, profitable, and have raised €18M in funding (last round 4.5 years ago, we've been growing on our own money since). Headquartered in Berlin.

About the Role

We're hiring an Engineering Manager to lead one or more squads. You'll partner directly with the CTO to develop engineers, ship reliable software, and shape how our team works as we scale.

Who We Want

• Experienced Engineering People Manager: 3–5+ years of people management experience in software engineering, ideally in B2B SaaS environments.
• Strong Delivery Leadership: Proven track record of leading squads of 5-10 engineers through full product and delivery cycles.
• Technically Credible: Strong technical background as a backend or full-stack engineer (former Senior Engineer or equivalent). Comfortable reading code, engaging on server-side architecture, and contributing meaningfully to technical discussions. Backend experience in Java/Kotlin is a plus.
• Builder of Strong Engineers: Demonstrated success in promoting reports, broadening their scope, or aligning them with their strengths.
• Strong Hiring Instinct: Experience hiring engineers and successfully closing high-quality candidates.
• Comfortable with Difficult Conversations: Ability to have clear, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations when needed.
• Clear Communicator: Fluent in written and spoken English. Ability to communicate clearly across engineering, product, and leadership teams and create alignment.

Who We Don't Want

• Pure Delivery Manager: Focused solely on timelines and task tracking, neglecting product quality, technical health, and team growth.
• Engineer Escaping into Management: Moved into management primarily to avoid coding, rather than genuinely enjoying people leadership.
• Top-Down Architecture Owner: Desire to personally own all architecture decisions instead of enabling team ownership.
• First-Time People Manager: Lacking experience in leading teams through performance, hiring, and scaling challenges.
• Remote-Only Operator: Prefers fully remote work and avoids in-person collaboration and culture building.

Your Day To Day

• Conduct weekly or bi-weekly 1:1s with direct reports to support growth, alignment, and execution.
• Lead growth conversations and performance reviews, including development planning, quarterly check-ins, and calibration sessions.
• Collaborate with Product Managers and senior engineers on cycle planning, scoping, prioritization, dependencies, and team capacity.
• Actively participate in architecture and tech debt discussions, challenging decisions, supporting technical direction, and sponsoring long-term investments.
• Play a key role in hiring, from interviewing and feedback to debriefs and closing candidates.
• Collaborate across squads with other Engineering Managers and the CTO to maintain alignment and execution quality.
• Handle difficult conversations directly and thoughtfully, with support from the CTO where needed.

Stakeholders

• CTO: Manager and partner on people development, calibration, and technical direction.
• Direct Reports: Engineers in your squad(s); responsible for their development, performance, and growth.
• Product Manager(s): PMs own 'what' and 'why'; you own 'how' (delivery) and 'who' (people).
• People Ops: Partner on compensation and processes.

Why People Choose Us

• Mission that matters: Real impact on small businesses.
• Funded with conviction: $16.5M raised with a strong trajectory toward profitability.
• Modern stack: Kotlin/Quarkus, AWS, TypeScript/React/Next.js, and LangGraph for AI-powered features.
• Squad-based organization: Each squad owns its domain end-to-end with autonomy.
• Product-led structure: PMs report directly to the CPO for focused product strategy.
• Engineers own technical decisions: Managers participate, challenge, and sponsor.
• Hybrid by design: Berlin office as the center of gravity, with two WFH days standard.
• Direct feedback culture: Honest, direct, and kind feedback is integral to how we work.
• Two clear career tracks: Support for both Individual Contributor and Engineering Management paths, with reversibility.

Benefits & Culture

• Choice of Urban Sports Club/John Reed membership or public transport/Dance subscription.
• Regular company and team events.
• Annual personal development budget of €500.
• Inclusive and exciting startup culture enabling fast professional and personal growth.
• Beautiful office in the heart of Berlin with free snacks, drinks, and top-notch equipment.

We want to build a community, not just a company. We foster an environment where people enjoy spending time together through various activities.

We're looking for people with passion, grit, and integrity. You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the description. At Superchat, we welcome diverse perspectives and people who think rigorously.

Relocating to Berlin? We offer practical relocation support.

We look forward to your application!