Engineering Manager

We're hiring an Engineering Manager to join our crew at QOCO Systems! Are you the kind of engineering leader people want to work for again? Do you want to take a product team through the phase where it stops being small and has to actually scale? Then we would love to hear from you. This is a people leadership role first. We are not looking for the best engineer in the room. We are looking for someone who makes everyone else in the room better, and who has done it before rather than read about it. You will report directly to our CTO and own one of our core product areas with a team of roughly 5 to 10 engineers. At QOCO, we develop SaaS solutions that help global airlines and MROs (Maintenance, Repair and Operations) turn complex data into smooth operations and reduced aircraft downtime. Our products are used daily by airlines and MROs around the world, so what your team ships goes straight into live operations. What you'll be doing - Leading a team of 5 to 10 people, building and running one of our core product areas - Growing people: regular one-to-ones, honest feedback, career development, and knowing what each person is working toward - Hiring, and owning the quality of who joins the team - Being accountable for what the team delivers: predictability, quality, and getting problems surfaced early rather than late - Working closely with Product on what gets built and in what order, and saying no when it needs saying - Setting the technical bar with the team, and making sure architectural decisions get made rather than deferred - Scaling how the team works as it grows, without adding process nobody asked for What we expect from you as a leader We value open, respectful communication in both directions. We give feedback early and specifically, and we would always rather hear a concern in the moment than find out about it later. That includes when the concern is about our own decisions. You will be set up to succeed on three things: - The growth of your team - The quality of the people you hire - How early problems get surfaced and solved Our leadership principle for this role: build a team that ships good software and that people want to stay in. What we're looking for - Several years of experience leading engineering teams as their line manager, not only as a tech lead - A proven people leader: sets the bar high, performance driven, and genuinely takes care of people. You can point to engineers who grew under you - Experience scaling a team and a product through a growth phase, with the honest story of what broke and what you changed - A strong software engineering background. You won't be writing much production code, but you need enough depth that your team respects your technical judgement - Experience with modern SaaS development and cloud environments - The ability to work closely with Product and other stakeholders, including when priorities conflict - Comfort with hiring: writing the brief, running the process, making the call - Fluent English, written and spoken Highly valued - Experience in a scale-up rather than only in large, established organisations - Having built a team from a handful of people to a properly functioning engineering group - An AI-native approach to software development, and experience helping a team adopt AI tooling well - Interest in aviation, or in complex domains generally About QOCO We are a fast-growing company building next-generation SaaS solutions for the aviation industry, and a trusted partner of airlines, MROs and aircraft OEMs for over twelve years. Our mission is to help airline and MRO organizations unlock the full potential of their data to optimize operations and reduce aircraft downtime. We're proud of our collaborative culture, international crew and real impact on aviation worldwide. Fun fact: we more than doubled our team size from 25 to over 65 employees between 2021 and 2025, and we now have over 15 nationalities in the crew. With our recent growth investment, most of that growth is still ahead of us. At QOCO, you'll enjoy - Real ownership of a product area and the team that builds it - An experienced, collaborative and international engineering team - A CTO who is close enough to the work to be a genuine sparring partner - Scale-up energy with global customers - Good performance recognized and rewarded - Flexible hours and a hybrid work model - Great benefits: lunch and sport perks, occupational healthcare, and free breakfast at the office If you want a role where your success is measured by how good your team becomes, and you like the idea of that team solving real problems in aviation, we'd love to hear from you. Join us and help shape the future of aviation.