Engineering Manager

About this role

About LeafLink

LeafLink is the largest unified B2B cannabis platform, providing licensed cannabis businesses a suite of tools to manage their business more effectively, sell or order from their favorite brands and accelerate growth. We are one platform, one solution and we’re defining the way thousands of cannabis brands, distributors, and retailers streamline their operations. With thousands of brands and retailers across 30+ markets in North America, we are setting the industry standard for how cannabis businesses grow together. LeafLink processes more than $5 billion in wholesale cannabis orders annually.

Our team, backed by funding from leading VC's, including Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, Nosara Capital, and Lerer Hippeau is poised to define the cannabis supply chain through technology. LeafLink was named one of Inc. 5000’s ‘Top 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies’; one of Fast Company's 'Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Enterprise for 2020', joining the ranks of Amazon, Slack, and VMWare; one of Built In NYC's 'Best Places to Work in 2021'; 2024 Fast Company’s Best WorkPlaces for Innovators for Banking, Finance, and Fintech category; 2024 Green Market Report Award for Best Fintech in cannabis - and we're just getting started!

The Role

LeafLink is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team of engineers building and evolving the technology that powers our eCommerce marketplace. This role combines people leadership, technical leadership, and delivery ownership, with responsibility for guiding a team through complex technical decisions and ensuring the successful delivery of high-quality products and systems.

As an Engineering Manager, you will serve as the technical leader for your team, working closely with engineers, Product Management, Design, and other stakeholders to translate business priorities into sound technical solutions. You will establish technical direction, guide architectural decisions, identify risks and dependencies, and ensure the team has the clarity and support needed to execute effectively.

This is not a traditional individual contributor role, but it is a deeply technical one. You will be expected to understand your team's systems, participate meaningfully in design and architecture discussions, review critical technical decisions, and provide hands-on technical guidance when needed. Your primary leverage comes through the team: setting direction, developing engineers, improving execution, and creating an environment where strong technical work can happen consistently.

You will work across modern frontend and backend technologies and architectural patterns, including TypeScript, React, Node.js, Python, containerized and serverless applications, Kubernetes, AWS managed services, event-driven systems, third-party integrations, and service-oriented architectures.

The ideal candidate combines strong engineering judgment with effective people leadership and operational discipline. You should be comfortable navigating ambiguity, leading complex initiatives, balancing product delivery with long-term technical health, and creating alignment across engineering and product teams.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of engineers, supporting their day-to-day effectiveness, technical growth, career development, and long-term goals.

• Serve as the technical leader for your team, establishing technical direction and ensuring engineers make sound architectural and software design decisions.

• Maintain a deep understanding of your team's systems and technical domain, providing meaningful guidance on architecture, implementation strategy, scalability, reliability, security, and operational readiness.

• Partner closely with Product Management to define roadmaps, sequence initiatives, identify dependencies, and develop realistic short- and long-term delivery plans.

• Translate product and business objectives into clear technical strategies, ensuring the team understands not only what it is building but why and how the pieces fit together.

• Lead the technical planning and execution of complex initiatives from initial discovery and design through implementation, release, and production operation.

• Work with engineers and technical leaders to ensure appropriate investment in platform health, technical debt, scalability, security, reliability, observability, and developer efficiency alongside product priorities.

• Identify technical risks, assumptions, dependencies, and delivery constraints early, and work with Product and Engineering leadership to make informed tradeoffs and adjust plans when necessary.

• Drive accountability for team commitments while creating an environment where risks and challenges are surfaced early and addressed constructively.

• Coordinate with other Engineering Managers, Staff Engineers, and technical leaders to manage cross-team dependencies and ensure architectural consistency across the broader platform.

• Establish and evolve engineering practices and architectural standards that address the unique complexities of LeafLink's business while complementing broader organizational standards.

• Improve team effectiveness by using delivery metrics, retrospectives, operational data, and qualitative…