Senior Engineering Manager

About GameChanger: We believe in the life-changing impact youth sports have on and off the field because they encourage leadership, teamwork, responsibility, and confidence—important life lessons that have the power to propel our youth toward meaningful futures. We recognize that without coaches, parents, and volunteers, organized youth sports could not exist. By building the first and best place to experience the youth sports moments important to our community, we are helping families elevate the next generation through youth sports. So if you love sports and their community-building potential, or building cool products is your sport, GameChanger is the team for you. We are a remote-first, dynamic tech company based in New York City, and we are solving some of the biggest challenges in youth sports today. The Position: GameChanger is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager to lead a team focused on building and scaling new products and platform capabilities that support the future of GameChanger. This is a senior people-leadership and product-engineering role with impact beyond a single team. You will build and develop a high-performing squad while partnering closely with Product, Design, Business Development, and senior engineering leaders to shape the strategy, roadmap, and operating model for a new partner-facing platform. You will coordinate across multiple teams and systems, establish durable ways of working, and influence the broader technical and product direction of the organization. You will lead in a highly ambiguous environment, balancing rapid learning and near-term partner commitments with technical excellence and long-term scalability. You will create clarity across a complex cross-functional space, anticipate dependencies and organizational risks, and ensure teams make sound product and technical tradeoffs. You will also strengthen backend and API expertise within your team, develop emerging leaders, and create systems that help engineers and partner teams operate effectively without depending on your direct involvement. You will report to a Director of Engineering. What You’ll Do: Build, lead, and develop a high-performing engineering squad while influencing the broader direction and operating model of the group. Partner with Product, Design, Business Development, and senior technical leaders to define a multi-quarter product and engineering strategy, roadmap, and measurable outcomes. Translate partner, customer, and business needs into clear priorities, balancing rapid experimentation and early delivery with investment in a durable long-term platform. Coordinate work across your team, platform, data, client, and other engineering teams, aligning ownership and sequencing across systems that contribute to the end-to-end partner experience. Anticipate cross-team dependencies, delivery risks, architectural constraints, and organizational bottlenecks; establish mechanisms that help teams resolve them early. Hold a consistent bar for engineering craft and guide the development of a secure, reliable, scalable API product, including authentication and authorization, versioning, documentation, observability, operational readiness, and support. Ensure the team uses partner feedback, product outcomes, and service-health metrics to learn, adapt, and make sound investment decisions. Coach and develop engineers and technical leaders through clear expectations, candid feedback, thoughtful delegation, and growth opportunities that expand their scope and impact. Hire and onboard strong engineers as the squad grows, building a collaborative, inclusive culture grounded in ownership, customer focus, and continuous learning. Design practices and decision-making systems that improve delivery, technical quality, and alignment across teams without creating unnecessary process. Communicate strategy, progress, tradeoffs, risks, and decisions clearly to engineering, product, business, and executive stakeholders. Contribute to the group level and Engineering leadership beyond your immediate squad by leading cross-team initiatives, improving organizational effectiveness, and helping shape our engineering culture and management practices. What You’ll Bring: 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 4+ years leading engineering teams and developing engineers at multiple levels. A track record of leading teams that delivered reliable, customer-facing products while coordinating successfully across multiple teams, systems, and stakeholder groups. Experience shaping multi-quarter strategy, turning ambiguous business goals into clear outcomes, and balancing immediate delivery with longer-term technical and organizational health. Experience building or operating external, customer- or partner-facing APIs, developer platforms, integrations, or distributed backend systems. Strong technical judgment and depth in backend systems or API design, with enough breadth to engage credibly in architecture conversations, hold a high bar for quality and reliability, and earn the trust of senior engineers. An understanding of API product concerns such as authentication and authorization, backwards compatibility, versioning, documentation, developer experience, observability, reliability, and support. Demonstrated success building healthy, inclusive teams; managing performance; coaching senior engineers and emerging leaders; and creating meaningful growth opportunities. The ability to influence without direct authority, navigate disagreement constructively, and create alignment across engineering, product, business, and executive stakeholders. Experience creating scalable processes or operating mechanisms that improve outcomes across more than one team. Experience working directly with third-party developers, strategic partners, or platform ecosystems is strongly preferred. Experience with TypeScript, Node.js, AWS, Redis, or PostgreSQL is a plus. Who You Are: A people-first leader who sets clear expectations, gives candid feedback, delegates effectively, and creates an environment where engineers and emerging leaders can thrive. A strategic systems thinker who connects team execution to broader product, technical, and business outcomes and anticipates second-order effects. Product-minded and customer-focused; you understand that a successful external API includes contracts, documentation, developer workflows, operations, and support—not only endpoints. Comfortable owning a broad, ambiguous, high-impact space and shaping a path forward across multiple teams and stakeholder groups. A pragmatic decision-maker who can balance speed, quality, technical investment, organizational capacity, and partner needs over a longer time horizon. Collaborative and low-ego, with a track record of building trust, navigating conflict, and driving alignment without relying on direct authority. Committed to continuous learning and to raising the effectiveness of your team, your peers, and the broader engineering organization. Perks : Work remotely throughout the US* or from our well-furnished, modern office in Manhattan, NY. Unlimited vacation policy. Paid volunteer opportunities. WFH stipend - $500 annually to make your WFH situation comfortable. Snack stipend - $60 monthly to have snacks shipped to your home office. Full health benefits - medical, dental, vision, prescription, FSA/HRA., and coverage for family/dependents. Life insurance - basic life, supplemental life, and dependent life. Disability leave - short-term disability and long-term disability. Retirement savings