<p><strong>Who We Are (<a href="http://www.modemobile.com/" target="_blank">Mode.Inc</a>)</strong></p> <p>Mode is a fast-growing technology company building businesses at the intersection of AI, data, mobile apps, and digital experiences. Our portfolio of mobile apps and digital products reaches 100M+ monthly active users across a global audience. We continue to accelerate growth through product innovation, strategic acquisitions, and emerging business opportunities.</p> <p>Mode was recognized by Deloitte as the <strong>#1 fastest-growing software company in North America</strong> on the 2023 Technology Fast 500. Today, we are building our next phase of growth, including expanding Mode's AI and data business and developing direct relationships with companies that can benefit from the data and capabilities we have built.</p> <p><strong>Our Team and Culture Drive Our Success</strong></p> <p>Our team is the heart of our culture. We value innovation, collaboration, and curiosity, with a passion for getting things done. We strive to hire and cultivate the best team members and foster a culture of open communication and transparency. We are driven and hard-working but also committed to having fun along the way. We allow OKRs to guide us, assume positive intent, sometimes agree to disagree and commit, honor our commitments, seek to accomplish more with less, and encourage everyone to speak up as our team owns our company’s success.</p> <p>You can read more about our team and how we work <a href="https://www.modemobile.com/team" target="_blank">here</a>.</p> <h4><strong>The Role</strong></h4> <p>Mode Mobile is looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead the engineering team taking ownership of a VPN product following its acquisition, and to become a technical leader for future acquired products.</p> <p>This role sits at the intersection of engineering leadership, product ownership, and technical acquisition integration. You will take unfamiliar, live products from acquisition through transition, stabilization, integration, and ongoing growth.</p> <p>We are a user-facing product-led team, and we are looking for someone who is passionate about turning acquired products into thriving, well-run businesses.</p> <p>This is a player-coach role. Initially you will be hands-on with development and operations alongside your engineers: reviewing and writing code, closing knowledge gaps left by the previous team, and making the architectural and prioritization calls that come with inheriting a live product. As the team grows and the transition stabilizes, your focus will shift toward people leadership, delivery management, and building a repeatable playbook for onboarding future acquisitions. </p> <p>You’ll work closely with the VP of Engineering, Product Managers, other Engineering Managers, Corporate development, Marketing, Operations, and several stakeholders to define and execute according to our strategic roadmap to accelerate our future growth.</p> <h4><strong>Who You Are and What You’ll Do</strong></h4> <ul> <li>You are passionate about giving people private, secure, and unrestricted access to the internet, and about helping users get more value from their smartphones. You care about your users and your team in equal measure.</li> <li>You are a strong engineer who chose to lead: you can still read a Kotlin, Swift, or Go pull request critically, debug a production incident, and make sound architecture decisions, and you enjoy stepping in when the team needs it.</li> <li>Acquisition and Integration</li> <ul> <li>Lead technical onboarding of acquired products from due diligence through transition and steady-state ownership.</li> <li>Assess inherited architecture, infrastructure, security, vendors, operational risks, and technical debt.</li> <li>Establish knowledge transfer and ensure critical operational knowledge is documented.</li> <li>Define and execute the transition plan with the acquired team and Mode stakeholders.</li> <li>Build and continuously improve a repeatable engineering acquisition playbook.</li> <li>You are comfortable operating with incomplete information. Acquired products rarely come with perfect documentation, clean architecture, or complete ownership records. You know how to establish the facts quickly, identify the highest risks, and make pragmatic decisions without waiting for perfect information.</li> </ul> <li>You build teams: you hire, onboard, coach, and grow engineers, run effective 1:1s, give candid feedback, and create a culture of ownership, testing, and continuous delivery.</li> <li>You embrace agentic AI as a force multiplier for your team: you use AI coding agents yourself for code, investigation, and documentation, and you set the standards and workflows for how your engineers use them safely and productively.</li> <li>You value working closely with Product Management, learning directly from users about what matters to them, and developing solutions that they love.</li> <li>You run delivery well: 2-week sprints, clear OKRs, sensible estimation, and honest status reporting up to leadership, with a bias toward finding minimal ways to test hypotheses and validate feasibility.</li> <li>You’re a strong advocate for unit/integration testing, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and continuously shipping to production, and you will establish them where they don’t exist yet.</li> <li>You are security- and compliance-minded: secrets management, encryption, key handling, user privacy, and regulations such as GDPR, CCPA,