Engineering Manager

With the move to the cloud, Kubernetes has become widely adopted by DevOps and Platform Engineering teams, but it has also added complexity. While scaling Kubernetes at Intuit, the Akuity founders started building Argo CD in order to streamline the adoption of Kubernetes. Argo CD helps developers own, understand and deploy their K8s deployments via GitOps.

Today, Argo CD is the third most popular project in the CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) and is used by 70% of companies who are using Kubernetes in production. The list of Argo CD users includes companies like Intuit, BlackRock, Tesla, Major League Baseball, Peloton, and many more.

The team founded Akuity in 2021 to enable enterprises to ship software faster and more reliably with modern GitOps best practices. The Akuity Platform enables teams to manage the development and deployment across hundreds – if not thousands – of Kubernetes clusters from a single control plane. Trusted by top companies around the globe, the Akuity Platform provides the only end-to-end GitOps platform for the enterprises.

Our mission is to simplify the software delivery process so that DevOps and Platform Engineering teams can move fast, and deploy code effortlessly without the fear of breaking things.

The Role

We're looking for an Engineering Manager to own the day-to-day operational rhythm of our engineering organization. Your job is to make sure the machine runs — cycles are planned and tracked, nothing gets dropped, engineers are unblocked, and bugs and customer issues get the right attention at the right time.

This is an execution-and-accountability role above all else. You'll be the person who knows the status of everything, follows up when things go quiet, and keeps the team moving without micromanaging. The Head of Engineering sets direction; you make sure it lands.

This role has a natural growth path. As you build trust and demonstrate range, you'll have the opportunity to take on broader operational ownership across hiring, compliance support, infrastructure, and more.

Cycle Operations

• Plan and track development cycles end-to-end — nothing should be unclear or invisible
• Run cycle kickoffs and retros; make sure each cycle ends with clear outcomes and the next one starts cleanly
• Maintain GitHub project boards, issues, and milestones — keep them current, tidy, and useful
• Flag blockers and capacity issues early, before they become misses

Triage & Prioritization

• Own the inbound queue: bugs, customer requests, and ensure tasks are triaged, assigned, and moving
• Work with the Head of Engineering to balance incoming requests against cycle commitments
• Ensure nothing urgent sits unaddressed and nothing routine gets forgotten

Follow-Through

• This is the most important part of the job — you notice when things go quiet and act on it
• Follow up with engineers proactively; close open loops before they become problems
• Maintain a clear picture of what's in flight, what's blocked, and what's at risk

People Management

• Run regular 1:1s with engineers; know how each person is doing technically and professionally
• Provide coaching and mentorship; help engineers grow and do their best work
• Support the hiring process: phone screens, interviews, and offer coordination
• Onboard new engineers with clear 30-60-90 plans and structured ramp support
• Handle difficult conversations with professionalism and care

Required

• 8+ years in software engineering, with 2+ years managing an engineering team
• Solid Kubernetes experience; we build on top of it, and you need to understand it well enough to be credible with the team and with customers
• Experience with Go — it's the foundation of our tech stack, and you should be able to read it, review it, and contribute when you have the time.
• Naturally organized, you run off a system, not memory, and you're relentless about follow-through
• Fluent in GitHub operations: issues, PRs, project boards, labels, milestones, you keep things clean and useful
• Solid communicator; engineers trust you, and stakeholders get straight answers
• Enough technical depth to understand what engineers are building, give meaningful feedback on PRs, and recognize when something is going sideways
• Comfortable running software development cycles in any flavor, Shape Up, Scrum, Kanban. You understand how engineering work flows
• Self-directed and comfortable with ambiguity; a startup at this stage doesn't hand you a playbook

Strong Advantage

• Hands-on experience with GitOps workflows or the CNCF ecosystem (Argo CD, Kargo, Flux, etc.)
• Familiarity with the Shape Up development methodology
• Open source project or CNCF ecosystem exposure (Argo CD, Kargo, Flux, etc.)
• Experience with tools in our stack: GitHub Actions, AWS, Auth0, Stripe
• Exposure to security and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, ISO 45001)

This role starts focused on cycle operations and team management. As you build trust and demonstrate range, you'll have the opportunity to expand into:

• Full hiring lifecycle ownership — recruiting through onboarding
• SDLC and toolchain ownership — CI/CD, dependency management, container scanning
• Compliance operations support — vulnerability triage, audit preparation, access reviews
• Vendor and IT operations as the team scales

We're a 55-person company growing fast. The scope here grows with you.

If you want to stay close to the code, this role lets you do that. When your management responsibilities are handled, and nothing is on the critical path, you’re welcome to pick up engineering work — review PRs in depth, contribute a fix, or help with a feature. It won’t be your primary job, and it won’t be expected, but it’s there if you want it.

This is a good fit for someone who loves engineering and wants to stay technically sharp, but is ready to make the shift to where their highest impact is on the team rather than the codebase.

• Competitive compensation, commensurate with experience
• Equity participation in a well-funded, growing company
• Fully remote: work from anywhere within US time zones (Pacific through Eastern), including Canada and other regions
• Home office stipend and equipment budget
• Flexible time off and a culture that respects it
• Work directly with the engineers who built Argo CD and Kargo; you'll learn a lot here