Engineering Manager at Pleo – Lead & Grow in Fintech in Columbus

About Pleo

Messy spend management is tricky business. And tedious processes are a lose-lose situation for all involved, not just finance. At Pleo, we're changing that. We build spend solutions that make managing money seamless, empowering, and surprisingly effective for finance teams and employees alike — with a vision to help all businesses 'go beyond'.

The word 'Pleo' actually means 'more than you'd expect', and living by that mantra has been the secret to our success over the last 10 years.

Now, we're at a pivotal moment in our journey; every move we make has a direct impact on our 40,000+ customers, our business, and our collective success. We need people who take pride in uncovering customer needs, who turn complex problems into simple solutions, challenge the way things are done (respectfully), and always aim high. With great ambitions driving us forward, we can't say we've got this whole thing figured out. And frankly, that's half the fun! What we can say is that we're a driven, progressive, and, importantly, a kind bunch of 850+ people from over 100 nationalities, all committed to delivering the future of business spending, together.

About the Role

Joining our team as an Engineering Manager places you at the forefront of advancing our technical excellence and innovation. You will be part of a knowledgeable team of leaders representing various technical areas. In this role, you will report directly to our Product Lead, while your closest day-to-day collaborator will be the Product Manager supervising the same cross-functional teams.

You're responsible for delivery and outcomes across multiple engineering teams. In this role, you are a developer at heart but a leader by choice. You are someone who has lived the dev life, understands the technical trenches, but realized your true calling is empowering other developers to do their best work. You foster the environment in which engineers perform at their best and grow both as individuals and as a team. You do so by serving as a mentor and coach, ensuring each team member is clear on expectations, making sure our processes help rather than hinder, and working closely with engineers to ensure we are building high-quality software.

Your Leadership Style

We are looking for a leader with an empowering management style — someone who knows how to motivate a team, establish a clear sense of direction, and build a resilient team spirit. You lead by enabling others rather than micromanaging, creating an environment where engineers feel ownership over their work.

Balancing empathy with high standards, you know how to keep the team accountable to their commitments and quality benchmarks. We want an engineering manager whose team will be standing on the top of the mountain with them — celebrating a shared victory together, energized by the journey rather than left behind exhausted on the path below. You will help your team(s) through the journey of becoming high-performing, building deep trust among the members, and helping them fine-tune their processes.

What This Role Entails

• Vision & Alignment: Work closely with the Product Lead and Product Managers to set a clear vision and direction for your group of product teams. Align technical direction within your area with the overall technology direction of the company.

• Direct Management & Coaching: Directly manage, mentor, and oversee Engineers (and Tech Leads). Focus heavily on continuous training, upskilling, and professional growth for your team members.

• Accelerate AI Adoption: Evaluate, introduce, and integrate modern AI development tools and methodologies into the team's daily routines to safely boost developer velocity and innovation.

• Drive Quality & Mindset: Cultivate a customer-centric, solution-oriented mindset while holding a high standard for clean, high-quality, and scalable software delivery.

• Continuous Improvement: Continuously improve the environment, tooling, and processes for how we build our product, ensuring technical debt is managed and developer velocity is optimized.

• Department Representation: Represent engineering in key initiatives and projects within the department or across the company, ensuring they get delivered successfully.

• Organizational Design: Design the organization, establish clear objectives, and maintain a high standard in people, delivery, and technology.

You Will Thrive in This Role If You:

• Are a Technologist at Heart: You have concrete software development experience in your background and maintain a sharp, active interest in technology. While you won't be on the critical path for daily feature delivery, you aren't afraid to roll up your sleeves, dig into the technical details, and go back to the grounds to help the team unblock complex technical challenges. You speak the language of engineers fluently, using your technical depth to actively train, upskill, and elevate the team.

• Drive AI Transformation & Adaptability: You are highly adaptive to change and actively embrace AI-driven ways of working (such as leveraging AI coding assistants, automated testing, and LLM tooling to optimize workflows). Ideally, you have successfully championed this shift in a previous role and can enthusiastically coach and help our teams accelerate their own AI transformation.

• Have a Passion for People Management & Coaching: You transitioned into leadership because you genuinely care about people, culture, and team dynamics. You treat every challenge as a coaching opportunity, whether pairing with a developer or mapping out a career framework.

• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: You like to work with cross-functional teams and other stakeholders to align engineering functions with product and business direction. Each of our teams is made up of "co-founders" from Product and Engineering — joined by designers, coders, and commercial minds. You optimize for both customers and the business.

• Optimize Processes & Remove Roadblocks: You enjoy the design and optimization of teams to maximize their efficiency. You are comfortable stepping deeply into technical discussions to guide architectural decisions, or taking important stakeholder meetings to clear obstacles.

• Are an Exceptional Communicator: You bridge the gap between deep technical execution and commercial strategy, communicating with absolute clarity to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Benefits

• Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending!)

• Lunch is on us for your work days — enjoy catered meals or receive a lunch allowance based on your local office.

• Comprehensive private healthcare — depending on your location, coverage options include Vitality, Alan, or Médis.

• 25 days of holiday + your public holidays.

• Both hybrid and fully remote working options available.

• Access to MyndUp for free mental health and well-being support.

• Paid parental leave — we want to make sure you don't have to compromise your family due to work.

Application Tips

Transparency is important to us, so we wanted to share some insights about what we're looking for to help you set yourself up for success. Last time we hired for a similar role, we received a vast number of applications but only a few were selected for an intro call. Key reasons candidates didn't progress past the screening stage included:

• CV writing and content: We receive a lot of CVs, and many are AI-generated. We love seeing people leverage AI — it's a big focus for us internally too — but without human intervention, these CVs can become generic and fail to show a candidate in the best light. What we're really looking for is the specific details of real impact that only you know from your previous experience. A top tip: use the "Achieved X, as measured by Y, by doing Z" formula (credit: Laszlo Bock, ~2014) to give a clear picture of what you've worked on. Including links to your previous companies' websites is also a huge help.

• Application care: Every single application is reviewed by a human because we believe candidates' efforts should be matched by an equal level of human care. Read and answer the application questions carefully — they make a huge difference in our decision-making process.

• Profile to role fit: Highlight the most important aspects of the role and ensure your experience directly speaks to the requirements listed.

About Your Application

• English first. Since it's our company language, please submit your application in English.

• A fair look for everyone. Our talent team reads every single application to ensure the process is fair. We only accept applications through our system — our support team can't pass on calls or emails.

• Diversity drives us. We can only reach our goals if our team reflects the world around us. That starts with you hitting apply, even if you don't tick every single box. We encourage people from all backgrounds and experiences to join us.

• Interview at your best. If you have any accessibility requirements or need a specific format, email [email protected]. We'll design a process that works for you.

• Your data is safe. When you apply, we process your personal data as a data processor. For more information on how Pleo processes personal data, read our Privacy Policy here.

• Applying for multiple roles? Nothing is stopping you, and we assess every role independently. However, we do look for alignment, so make sure you can explain why your interest and experience are right for each specific role.

• Reapplying. If you're applying for the same role again, please wait six months from your last decision before hitting submit.