Engineering Manager

About NetX

NetX, part of Heritage Werks Group (HWG), is one of the longest-tenured and most trusted enterprise digital asset management platforms in the industry—with decades spent building the infrastructure that corporations, sports franchises, museums, government agencies, and cultural institutions rely on to organize, govern, and surface the content and knowledge that define them.

Based in Portland, Oregon, NetX is the digital foundation of the Heritage Intelligence ecosystem, making institutional knowledge secure, searchable, discoverable, and accessible across teams—and serving as the trusted content layer that powers NetX AuthorityAI™, our enterprise AI product built on governed institutional knowledge.

Our team works with galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and many of the world’s most iconic brands to turn enterprise content into a trusted, connected asset.

The Opportunity

NetX is seeking an Engineering Manager to guide a small, experienced engineering team through a period of significant change, as we modernize a mature B2B SaaS product and adopt AI-assisted development practices.

As the modernization gets underway, the team needs clearer structure, a consistent operating rhythm and shared momentum. The Engineering Manager will build these together with the team, while preserving the practices that already work well. This newly redefined role offers the opportunity to shape how engineering management works at NetX, in close partnership with the CTO, Principal Architect and Product Manager.

This is a management-first role. The successful candidate will not write production code, but must have the engineering depth to understand the team's work and to engage as a credible peer with technical and product leadership.

The ideal candidate brings broad leadership experience and the discernment to tailor it to NetX. They take time to learn how the team works, focus on the changes that deliver the most value, and build adoption one step at a time.

Reporting and Working Relationships

The Engineering Manager reports to the CTO and works in partnership with the Principal Architect and the Product Manager. Each of the three roles has a distinct focus:

-  Engineering Manager: people and capacity, including hiring, one-on-ones, performance, growth and delivery.

-  Principal Architect: how the product is built, including architecture, technical standards and the sequencing of the modernization.

-  Product Manager: what the product does and when, including scope, priorities and customer commitments.

Core Responsibilities

- People leadership. Hold regular one-on-ones, set clear expectations, provide direct feedback, and run performance reviews and development planning for a team spanning backend, UI, QA, platform and support, including area leads.

- Capacity and delivery. Match the team's abilities and capacity to the organization's priorities, support the area leads in turning plans into well-scoped work, and keep delivery on track.

- Project coordination. Take a hands-on role in project coordination while delivery practices mature, and help shape how project management works at NetX over time

- Engineering representation. Serve as the primary point of contact for Sales and Account Management on engineering support, weighing requests against current priorities, communicating tradeoffs, and protecting the team's focus on planned work.

- Incident management. Ensure on-call coverage is fair and sustainable, every incident has a clear owner, and follow-up work is completed. Serve as an escalation point for major incidents, keeping the CTO and customer-facing teams informed.

- Modernization program. Partner with the Principal Architect and Product Manager to turn the target design and plan into milestones, sequencing and staffing that the team can execute alongside customer commitments.

- Engineering process. Establish practical planning, review, testing and release checkpoints that surface problems early. Document them, and refine them when evidence shows they need to change.

- AI-assisted development. Lead the team's adoption of AI-assisted best practices and standards through training, shared habits and a sensible pace, while maintaining accountability for quality.

- Operational decisions. Resolve routine staffing, scheduling and cross-team questions directly, and escalate to the CTO only the decisions that require the CTO's involvement.

- Hiring and development. Lead hiring and onboarding in partnership with the CTO and People Operations, and develop the area leads as senior technical leaders.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first six months:

• The Engineering Manager understands how the team works today, and has agreed priorities for change with the CTO and area leads.
• Every team member has regular one-on-ones and clear expectations.
• Planning runs on a consistent cadence, and the team trusts the plan.
• The modernization has defined milestones, owners and visible progress.
• Fewer routine questions reach the CTO, and fewer problems are discovered late.

Required Qualifications

- A solid software engineering background, ideally in enterprise SaaS, with the ability to review code and designs closely enough to identify problems, weigh tradeoffs, and distinguish genuine complexity from avoidable delay.

- Several years of experience managing engineers directly, including team leads, with a track record in goal setting, coaching, performance reviews and difficult conversations.

- Experience introducing structure to a team with informal ways of working, and building shared ownership of it.

- A record of tailoring process and practices to the needs of each team.

- Strong working knowledge of modern software delivery: planning, code review, testing, release management and operating a hosted product reliably.

- Experience leading remote teams and building accountability through trust and clear expectations.

- A direct, composed and diplomatic style, with a record of raising difficult issues early and helping people resolve disagreement constructively.

Preferred Qualifications

- Experience leading the modernization of a legacy enterprise product with an active customer base.

- Experience with AI-assisted or specification-driven development, including helping a team adopt it.

- Working knowledge of AWS-hosted products and infrastructure.

- Working familiarity with Java, relational databases such as MySQL and SQL Server, modern front-end frameworks such as React, and media processing services.

- A background in digital asset management, content platforms or other metadata-rich enterprise software.

- Experience in a small organization where leaders move between planning, management and hands-on support.

Culture & Work Environment

NetX offers a collegial, supportive environment and a pace that respects work-life balance. The team is small, informal and low on ceremony. Many members have been at NetX for more than a decade, and know each other and the product well. We value curiosity, sound judgment and steady follow-through.

We believe in:

- Collaborative teammates who put the team first

- Direct, respectful conversation

- Practical solutions and lightweight process

- Work that is visible and recognized

·        Compensation & Benefits

·        Competitive base salary

·        Remote-first role with flexibility and autonomy

·        Medical, dental, vision, and 401(k)

·        A company that invests in people, celebrates wins, and rewards results