Engineering Manager

**Portless** Engineering Manager; Competitive base (~$180K–$230K) + equity (Series A); Remote — North America (significant US Eastern overlap)

**About Company** Portless is rebuilding the global e-commerce supply chain. By shipping directly from manufacturing hubs in China to consumers worldwide — with a fully domestic delivery experience (local carrier, local tracking, 3–5 day delivery) — Portless lets brands skip the traditional months-long container-and-3PL cycle. Production can ship the day after it's made, compressing supply-chain timelines from ~4 months to a single day and freeing cash flow that brands reinvest into growth (some have scaled from <$1M to >$100M in 18 months).

Originally a venture-backed D2C company (Browse), the team pivoted to a B2B model in 2023 after realizing its supply chain was its real edge. Revenue has doubled-to-tripled every year since. The core ICP is DTC brands doing $1–50M in revenue, ranging up to enterprise and public companies. It's a Series A company with a large operations footprint in China (QA, sourcing, and a growing set of supply-chain services) and a globally distributed team.

Portless is fully remote with six core values (one being "kind and caring"), led by founder Izzy and COO Jonathan Frankel (10-year founder with a prior venture-backed exit). The long-term vision: take the entire supply chain off merchants' hands so they can focus on product, brand, and marketing.

**About the Role** Portless is scaling fast and its engineering team has grown organically — lots of talented people working on a lot of different things. This role exists to turn that into a cohesive, scalable, high-throughput organization. Reporting to the VP of Engineering (who owns architecture and technical vision), the Engineering Manager owns execution, delivery, and people management for a globally distributed team of ~10 engineers. It is a ~90% people-management role (not hands-on coding, not a player-coach) — but not a people-only manager: the EM must bring deep technical credibility and hold their own with senior engineers on architecture and system design. The mandate: hold a high quality bar, set firm timelines, remove roadblocks, and give engineers the support to hit deadlines — while keeping the culture kind and caring.

**Responsibilities** - Own delivery: break down the roadmap, own sprint commitments and release cycles, drive daily momentum across time zones. - Move the team from "everyone doing their own thing" to a scalable, high-throughput org with clear process. - Manage and grow ~10 distributed engineers (US, Canada, EU, UK, China) — 1:1s, performance expectations, coaching. - Remove roadblocks and interface with other teams so engineering has what it needs to move quickly. - Hold a high bar: address underperformance directly (PIP and support first, exit if needed) while keeping morale high. - Own incident management and sustainable, distributed on-call; track and improve delivery metrics (DORA).

**Required Skills** A. 2+ years directly managing software engineering teams (~10 engineers), with a track record running distributed, asynchronous teams. B. Deep technical credibility — was a strong engineer before managing and can still go toe-to-toe with senior engineers on architecture, system design, and data-heavy tradeoffs (not coding day-to-day, but not a "people-only" manager). Comfortable in the stack: Node.js/TypeScript, React, GCP, PostgreSQL/Firestore, ClickHouse/BigQuery. C. Hands-on 0-to-1 / early-stage startup experience — has built and scaled in a messy, fast-changing environment, not only run process at large, stable companies. D. Proven experience raising delivery throughput and installing scalable process in a high-growth environment. E. Experience owning incident response / on-call and delivery metrics (DORA or similar). F. Willing and able to manage out low performers fairly (PIP first) while holding a high-performance bar.

**Bonus Skills** - Hybrid background: big-company rigor (e.g. Google/Meta/Salesforce-style process) plus rapid-growth startup experience. - Domain exposure to logistics, supply chain, or e-commerce.

**Logistical Info** - Location: Fully remote, North America. Must overlap ~6 hours with US Eastern (roughly 9am–4pm ET). - Compensation: Competitive base, ~$180K–$230K + equity (Series A). - Number of openings: 1. - **Other:** Fully remote; six core values incl. "kind and caring."

**Ideal Background** - Strongest signal — engineering managers who've scaled teams in a fast-growing startup AND carry big-company rigor (the ideal is a hybrid of the two). - Also strong — big tech (Google, Meta, Salesforce) for process and scale, paired with startup adaptability. - Calibration: a pure big-company-only career (never in a fast-moving, shifting environment) is a weaker fit.

**Green Flags** - Kind, caring, respectful leader who still holds a high bar and firm deadlines. - Has hired, coached, PIP'd, and — when necessary — fired; comfortable with accountability. - Strong async communicator; defaults to documentation and clear process.

**Red Flags** - "Drill sergeant" personality — or the opposite, too nice to ever manage out a low performer. - Job-hopping / no meaningful career progression. - Only ever worked at large, stable companies; can't operate amid change (no 0-to-1 / early-stage experience). - Strong people-manager but light technically — can't engage credibly on architecture / system design (the #1 reason strong-looking candidates have failed the case study). - Comp expectations above ~$300K base — above the ceiling for this role. **Interview Process** 1. Hiring manager interview. 2. Project/case exercise. 3. Peer interview. 4. Executive interview. (An additional call may be added if there are red flags.)