David runs every Beacon leadership search personally, including the Engineering Manager placement referenced above.
At an early-stage startup, an Engineering Manager isn't a full-time people-manager, they're a player-coach: still shipping code, mentoring a small team, and usually working directly with the founder. Most candidates lean too far one way. Here's how to find the ones who don't.
See the interview processFounders default to hiring the most senior engineer they know, assuming seniority equals management readiness. It doesn't. A great individual contributor who's never built a team from scratch will struggle with the parts of the job that have nothing to do with code: hiring, mentoring, and holding a delivery timeline that isn't just their own.
Our own Engineering Manager search for AthenaHQ wasn't a volume search. Of 217 candidates in the system, nearly all the real effort concentrated on one exact-fit candidate identified early and pursued directly. It closed in 59 days.
Ask when they last personally shipped something, and what it was. Vague answers are a red flag.
Not managed one that already existed. Building from scratch is a different skill entirely.
At this stage they'll work directly with the CEO or CTO, with far less process than they're used to.
Have they actually shipped an AI-powered feature, not just used AI tools personally.
Avoid candidates who want to manage only, if they haven't touched code in over a year, they've likely lost the technical fluency this stage of company needs. Avoid anyone who can't describe a specific tradeoff between shipping fast and paying down technical debt later. Avoid candidates whose only management experience came with an existing playbook already in place.
What they personally shipped last quarter, and why they're leaving.
Walk through how they built their current team's first dedicated function.
Ask directly how they'd handle fewer resources and less process than their current role.
Ask specifically whether the team shipped on time under this person, not just whether they were liked.
On our own recent search, an Engineering Manager placement closed at $300K total comp, in a market where the candidate had competing offers from $270K to $500K depending on company stage. Don't assume this role costs less than a VP of Engineering, a genuinely strong player-coach at a hot startup commands VP-level comp.
The best player-coach candidates are employed, performing, and not job-searching. That's why a narrow, targeted search almost always beats a wide, shallow one for this role.
David runs every Beacon leadership search personally, including the Engineering Manager placement referenced above.
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