Development Manager Role at Aquifer - Lead Eng Teams in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
This is a senior people-management role sitting one level below the CTO, giving it significant organizational visibility and influence. For engineering managers looking to step into a Director-level path, this is a meaningful rung on that ladder.
Compensation context: No salary is listed, but a Development Manager at a US-based SaaS company with full people-management scope (managing multiple tech leads and a technical architect) typically commands $150,000–$200,000 USD annually in the US market. Remote-first companies sometimes adjust for geography, so candidates outside major US metros may see variance.
Skills you'll develop:
- Engineering org design and capacity planning at a product company
- AI-assisted development governance — a fast-growing, high-demand competency
- Distributed team leadership across multiple pods
- SaaS delivery reliability and release engineering ownership
Culture signals: The structured language around "scorecards," "capability assessments," and "guardrails" suggests a process-mature, accountability-driven culture — closer to a scaling startup than an early-stage one. Aquifer operates in the edtech/medical education space, which tends to be mission-driven but methodical.
Green flags: Clear reporting structure, well-defined scope, distributed team experience valued. Watch for: No salary transparency and no mention of benefits — ask early in the process.
Headquarters: New Hampshire
URL: https://aquifer.org/
Summary
The Development Manager reports into the Chief Technology Officer and owns the engineering capacity, delivery commitments, and technical execution quality across Aquifer's development pods. This role directly manages all engineers, including pod tech leads and a technical architect, with full people-management responsibility. The Development Manager owns release reliability and the delivery/quality dimensions of engineering performance.
Responsibilities
- Ensure engineering executes the cadence necessary to deliver on roadmap commitments set by the Lead Product Manager.
- Own engineering scorecard metrics for quality and delivery.
- Directly manage all engineers, including both pod tech leads: performance, career development, hiring, and day-to-day support.
- Provide meaningful roles and assignments for engineers through talent and capability mapping.
- Own engineering capacity planning, translating roadmap commitments into realistic delivery plans.
- Own release reliability and production quality across both pods.
- Participate in engineering planning at every cadence.
- Lead the effort with the Technical Architect to adopt AI development best practices to increase velocity and quality.
- Support and grow the existing Rails-based product with attention to technical sustainability and delivery cost.
- Partner with the Lead Product Manager and both tech leads on cross-functional delivery planning.
Qualifications
- Proven experience managing engineering teams, engineering managers, or senior individual contributors — ideally in a Ruby on Rails environment.
- Track record of owning delivery commitments and release quality for a live SaaS product.
- Experience managing distributed or multi-site engineering teams.
- Demonstrated ability to evaluate the technical judgment and output of senior or staff-level engineers.
- Comfortable setting and enforcing technical and process guardrails for AI-assisted software development.
- Experience running structured capability assessments (e.g., evaluating a technical architect against defined deliverables) is a plus.
- Working familiarity with Jira/Confluence.
To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/aquifer-development-manager
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this Development Manager role fully remote?
What does the Development Manager at Aquifer actually manage?
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