Engineering Manager (Upcoming Apps Portfolio & VPN) at Mode Mobile

Job description

Who We Are ( Mode.Inc ) Mode is a fast-growing technology company building businesses at the intersection of AI, data, mobile apps, and digital experiences. Our portfolio of mobile apps and digital products reaches 100M+ monthly active users across a global audience. We continue to accelerate growth through product innovation, strategic acquisitions, and emerging business opportunities. Mode was recognized by Deloitte as the #1 fastest-growing software company in North America on the 2023 Technology Fast 500. Today, we are building our next phase of growth, including expanding Mode's AI and data business and developing direct relationships with companies that can benefit from the data and capabilities we have built. Our Team and Culture Drive Our Success Our team is the heart of our culture. We value innovation, collaboration, and curiosity, with a passion for getting things done. We strive to hire and cultivate the best team members and foster a culture of open communication and transparency. We are driven and hard-working but also committed to having fun along the way. We allow OKRs to guide us, assume positive intent, sometimes agree to disagree and commit, honor our commitments, seek to accomplish more with less, and encourage everyone to speak up as our team owns our company’s success. You can read more about our team and how we work here . The Role Mode Mobile is looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead the engineering team taking ownership of a VPN product following its acquisition, and to become a technical leader for future acquired products. This role sits at the intersection of engineering leadership, product ownership, and technical acquisition integration. You will take unfamiliar, live products from acquisition through transition, stabilization, integration, and ongoing growth. We are a user-facing product-led team, and we are looking for someone who is passionate about turning acquired products into thriving, well-run businesses. This is a player-coach role. Initially you will be hands-on with development and operations alongside your engineers: reviewing and writing code, closing knowledge gaps left by the previous team, and making the architectural and prioritization calls that come with inheriting a live product. As the team grows and the transition stabilizes, your focus will shift toward people leadership, delivery management, and building a repeatable playbook for onboarding future acquisitions. You’ll work closely with the VP of Engineering, Product Managers, other Engineering Managers, Corporate development, Marketing, Operations, and several stakeholders to define and execute according to our strategic roadmap to accelerate our future growth. Who You Are and What You’ll Do You are passionate about giving people private, secure, and unrestricted access to the internet, and about helping users get more value from their smartphones. You care about your users and your team in equal measure. You are a strong engineer who chose to lead: you can still read a Kotlin, Swift, or Go pull request critically, debug a production incident, and make sound architecture decisions, and you enjoy stepping in when the team needs it. Acquisition and Integration Lead technical onboarding of acquired products from due diligence through transition and steady-state ownership. Assess inherited architecture, infrastructure, security, vendors, operational risks, and technical debt. Establish knowledge transfer and ensure critical operational knowledge is documented. Define and execute the transition plan with the acquired team and Mode stakeholders. Build and continuously improve a repeatable engineering acquisition playbook. You are comfortable operating with incomplete information. Acquired products rarely come with perfect documentation, clean architecture, or complete ownership records. You know how to establish the facts quickly, identify the highest risks, and make pragmatic decisions without waiting for perfect information. You build teams: you hire, onboard, coach, and grow engineers, run effective 1:1s, give candid feedback, and create a culture of ownership, testing, and continuous delivery. You embrace agentic AI as a force multiplier for your team: you use AI coding agents yourself for code, investigation, and documentation, and you set the standards and workflows for how your engineers use them safely and productively. You value working closely with Product Management, learning directly from users about what matters to them, and developing solutions that they love. You run delivery well: 2-week sprints, clear OKRs, sensible estimation, and honest status reporting up to leadership, with a bias toward finding minimal ways to test hypotheses and validate feasibility. You’re a strong advocate for unit/integration testing, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and continuously shipping to production, and you will establish them where they don’t exist yet. You are security- and compliance-minded: secrets management, encryption, key handling, user privacy, and regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and SOC 2 are part of how you run a team that operates a privacy product. What You Bring to the Team Must Have: 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 2+ years managing engineers as a people manager or hands-on tech lead/manager in an agile environment delivering consumer products to end-users. Strong hands-on technical background, with deep expertise in at least one of our core areas and enough breadth to work effectively across the stack. Experience in two or more of the following is a strong plus: Native mobile: Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose) and/or iOS (Swift, UIKit/SwiftUI), including app store release management Backend services in Go (preferred), Python, or Node.js, with PostgreSQL and AWS (Lambda, S3, RDS) Infrastructure and DevOps: Terraform, Ansible, Docker, multi-cloud/multi-provider hosting, Datadog or similar observability Networking and VPN fundamentals: WireGuard, Shadowsocks or similar, DNS, TLS, and how mobile VPN clients and servers fit together Experience leading or being a key contributor in a technical acquisition, migration, or takeover of a live product: due diligence, transition planning, knowledge transfer, and integration into a parent organization. A track record of raising engineering quality on an inherited system: introducing automated testing, CI/CD, code review, documentation, and security hardening without stopping feature delivery. Agentic AI proficiency: Strong practical experience using AI coding agents and other AI tools for software development, investigation, testing, and documentation, with an understanding of how to use them safely and effectively within an engineering team. You’re a candid and empathetic communicator that is excited to join a startup that enjoys leveling up a company, and you are comfortable communicating status, risks, and trade-offs to executives. You have exceptional organizational and analytical skills leading to confident independent delivery, but know when and how to include others. You have experience building and operating large-scale systems and have led technical direction for a team. Passionate about Technology and keeping up to date with latest advancements, techniques and best practices. Alignment with our Core Values: Accountable: You take ownership of your responsibilities, demonstrating trustworthiness and self-discipline. You are consistent in your work, transparent in your actions, and communicate effectively. You follow through on commitments and strive for continuous improvement. Action-driven: Identify what is most important, agree on scope, timely execute, and drive the greatest impact. You take initiative, roll up your sleeves, and get things done. Caring: You genuinely care about yourself and others, our business and craft, our mission and vision, and are passionate in heart and mind. You understand the importance of our team and strive to create a positive, supportive work environment. Curious: You focus on the ‘why,’ learn and expand your knowledge, explore new ideas, and generally make things better. You're a lifelong learner with a thirst for knowledge and a constant desire to improve. Thorough: Your work is thoughtful, impactful, timely, accurate, and complete. You pay attention to detail, are meticulous, and ensure quality work and compliance. Nice to Have: Experience running a consumer VPN, proxy, or privacy product, including operating in restrictive network environments and handling law-enforcement / data requests Experience managing distributed, remote, multi-timezone teams, including contractors or a small inherited team Experience with subscription businesses: in-app purchases, Stripe, RevenueCat, attribution and analytics (Mixpanel, Amplitude, Firebase) Experience with vendor and cost management across multiple cloud and hosting providers Compliance program experience (SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA) and security audits Experience building an acquisition-integration playbook or an internal engineering standards program. What Success Looks Like In your first 90 days: You understand the recently acquired VPN product architecture, infrastructure, product, operational dependencies and business context. Critical technical and security risks are identified and prioritized. Knowledge gaps from the acquisition are closed. The team has clear ownership, delivery cadence, and operational responsibilities. Within 6 months: App is operating reliably within Mode's engineering standards. The team is shipping predictably and improving the product. Key technical debt and infrastructure risks are under control. You have established a repeatable approach to evaluating and onboarding future acquisitions. Longer term: You build a strong engineering team capable of owning acquired products independently. You lead technical integration of additional acquisitions. You continuously improve Mode's acquisition-to-operation playbook. We Believe in the Following Workplace Norms Allow OKRs to Guide Us Assume Positive Intent Agree to Disagree & Commit Set New Precedents Accomplish More with Less Hold Yourself & Others to High Standards Speak Up Be Resourceful Follow the 80/20 Rule What We Are Offering We are a 100% remote-first, global company. A competitive compensation package. We offer generous perks and benefits to team members. Participation in the Company's equity plan (for full-time team members). We provide individual bonuses in accordance with our Company Bonus Program. Work with energetic, passionate, and results-driven people. Celebrate team members' personal and work milestones. Remote social activities, including virtual coffee buddies. Bonusly - We use Bonusly as a way to recognize and reward team members for their hard work and commitment. Weekly Wednesday Get Stuff Done Days (No Meetings). Open PTO, generous Company Holidays, and Wellness Days (for full-time team members). This role is ideal for a results-driven marketing professional with a strong technical background and a keen eye for detail. If you are passionate about digital marketing and investor communications, we encourage you to apply and join a dynamic and innovative team. If we just described you and your perfect role, we'd love to talk with you. We have a lot to accomplish this year and look forward to making headway and creating success together! Mode.Inc does not accept/pay fees for unsolicited resumes from third-party agencies/vendors. Our company is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer. We are committed to providing a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We celebrate diversity and strive to create an inclusive environment for all team members.

Requirements

Must-haves

Who We Are ( Mode.Inc )
Our Team and Culture Drive Our Success
You can read more about our team and how we work here .
Mode Mobile is looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead the engineering team taking ownership of a VPN product following its acquisition, and to become a technical leader for future acquired products.
We are a user-facing product-led team, and we are looking for someone who is passionate about turning acquired products into thriving, well-run businesses.
Who You Are and What You’ll Do
You are passionate about giving people private, secure, and unrestricted access to the internet, and about helping users get more value from their smartphones. You care about your users and your team in equal measure.
Acquisition and Integration
Lead technical onboarding of acquired products from due diligence through transition and steady-state ownership.
Assess inherited architecture, infrastructure, security, vendors, operational risks, and technical debt.
Establish knowledge transfer and ensure critical operational knowledge is documented.
Define and execute the transition plan with the acquired team and Mode stakeholders.
Build and continuously improve a repeatable engineering acquisition playbook.
You build teams: you hire, onboard, coach, and grow engineers, run effective 1:1s, give candid feedback, and create a culture of ownership, testing, and continuous delivery.
You value working closely with Product Management, learning directly from users about what matters to them, and developing solutions that they love.
You run delivery well: 2-week sprints, clear OKRs, sensible estimation, and honest status reporting up to leadership, with a bias toward finding minimal ways to test hypotheses and validate feasibility.

Nice-to-haves

Backend services in Go (preferred), Python, or Node.js, with PostgreSQL and AWS (Lambda, S3, RDS)
Experience running a consumer VPN, proxy, or privacy product, including operating in restrictive network environments and handling law-enforcement / data requests
Experience managing distributed, remote, multi-timezone teams, including contractors or a small inherited team
Experience with subscription businesses: in-app purchases, Stripe, RevenueCat, attribution and analytics (Mixpanel, Amplitude, Firebase)
Experience with vendor and cost management across multiple cloud and hosting providers
Compliance program experience (SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA) and security audits
Experience building an acquisition-integration playbook or an internal engineering standards program.
What Success Looks Like

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