The posting
ABOUT US
At Pencil, we are driving innovation in advertising technology through our state-of-the-art SaaS product, which harnesses Generative AI to redefine content creation. Our mission is to make AI the default in advertising without replacing creative people. To achieve this, we need to make sure that our technology isn’t just in the hands of big brands - we need to try to help small businesses and creative individuals too.
THE ROLE
As Engineering Manager, you will be part of building and leading the people and ways of working that let our engineering teams ship great work, fast. You will manage engineers across several teams, own how those teams hire, grow, plan and deliver, and make sure each team has the clarity, support and process to do its best work. This is a leadership role focused on people and process, not hands-on technical delivery. You will be accountable for the value your teams deliver, and for making AI-first ways of working the default while keeping a human in the loop.
KEY RESPONSBILITIES:
- Lead, coach and develop a large group of engineers and team leads across multiple teams, running regular 1:1s, feedback, performance reviews and career development against Pencil Pathways
- Work with the other Engineering Managers to keep our existing processes (planning, delivery cadence, incident and release management, retros) aligned across teams, and contribute ideas and improvements to make them lighter and better
- Support the TPM in aligning priorities with Product, Design and Data, setting clear expectations and keeping delivery predictable across teams, and step in on people-related blockers
- Support hiring and onboarding for engineering: take part in interview loops, help assess candidates and set new joiners up to succeed
- Build a healthy, inclusive team culture; spot and resolve conflict, burnout and performance issues early and fairly
- Build a culture of continuous learning: encourage teams to try things and fail fast, and make sure every failure is reviewed openly so the learning is shared and acted on
- Build a working understanding of what your teams are building (architecture, key systems, trade-offs and technical risks) by staying close to design reviews, incident reviews and roadmap discussions, so you can ask the right questions and back your leads' technical decisions
- Hold your teams accountable for delivering value: tie work to agreed outcomes for customers and the business, not just output shipped
- Champion AI-first ways of working across your teams, in how engineers build and in the product, with clear human review and accountability for what ships
YOUR BACKGROUND:
- Several years managing engineers, including managing multiple teams or other managers, ideally in a SaaS or fast-growing product company
- A track record of improving team process and delivery (e.g. agile practices, planning, metrics) with measurable results, and of building a culture where teams learn from failure
- Strong people management: coaching, giving candid feedback, managing performance and growing talent
- Experience supporting hiring (interviewing, assessing candidates) and retaining high-performing engineers, and building diverse teams
- Technical fluency: you can follow how software is built and shipped, understand architecture and trade-off discussions, spot technical risk and ask good questions, and earn engineers' trust, without needing to code or design systems yourself
- A track record of teams delivering measurable value (customer or business outcomes), not just shipping features
- Hands-on experience introducing AI tools into how a team works, with a clear view of where human judgement stays essential
YOU'LL THRIVE HERE IF YOU...
- Move quickly and keep processes simple, always asking what else we can take away (Fast, Simple)
- Bring fresh ideas to how teams work and are led (Surprising)
- Treat people as people, with empathy, honesty and care for how our teams feel about the work (Human)
- Take full ownership of outcomes for your teams, including when things go wrong (Owners)
- Are excited by AI-first ways of working, while keeping a human in the loop for the decisions that matter, and judge success by the value delivered to customers and the business
- Fail fast but always learn: talk openly about what went wrong and turn it into improvements (Fast, Owners)
KPIS & SUCCESS MEASURES
- Retention: regretted attrition under 10% a year across your teams, with no surprise resignations (you know about risk before it happens)
- Engagement: eNPS or engagement score up at least 10 points within 12 months, with action plans in place for every team below target
- Growth: every direct report has a development plan and a promotion-readiness view
- Performance: underperformance addressed within 30 days of being identified, and no unmanaged performance cases at review time
- Hiring and onboarding: active part in interview loops with timely, well-reasoned feedback, and every new joiner on your teams has a 30/60/90-day plan, with check-ins held on time
- Alignment: one agreed way of working across all EMs, with process improvements proposed and shipped each quarter (e.g. 1 retro-driven change per team per quarter)
- Delivery predictability: at least 85% of committed work shipped on time each quarter across your teams, with slippage root-caused and fixed within one cycle
- Quality of output: change failure rate, escaped defects and repeat incidents trending down quarter on quarter across your teams
- Value delivered: teams ship against agreed outcomes (adoption, customer impact, revenue or cost targets set with Product), with at least 80% of roadmap goals achieved each quarter
- AI-first adoption: 100% of team members actively using approved AI tools in their work, with defect and rework rates holding steady or improving, and human review in place for AI-assisted output
- Continuous learning: every significant incident, missed commitment or failed experiment has a blameless review with actions completed on time, and learnings shared across teams and with the other EMs
BENEFITS:
- 25 days PTO plus public holidays, although we operate a Flexible Time Off scheme
- Health insurance / private medical cover
- Monthly stipend towards wellness, fitness, and learning and development
- Remote - work from anywhere in your home country
- Enhanced parental leave policies, whether you become a parent through birth, adoption or surrogacy
- Access to our Pencil office in The Shard, London for UK employees
- Flexible working hours
DEEP DIVE ABOUT PENCIL:
Pencil uses AI to make ads. Our mission is to make marketing effective and effortless. We want to become the default way ads get made - because AI ads are 10x faster and cheaper to make, and 2x better performing, than making them without AI.
We’re called Pencil because we believe AI will be a tool for creative people, not a replacement - it may even be as fundamental a tool in the future as the pencil was in the past.
Pencil was founded in 2018 with a team from Google, Facebook and Uber with backing from Sequoia and Entrepreneur First. We were acquired by The Brandtech Group in 2023 to pursue a shared vision of bringing GenAI to the Fortune 500.
https://www.trypencil.com
ABOUT THE BRANDTECH GROUP
The Brandtech Group’s mission is to be the best company in the world at helping leading global brands drive growth by connecting content, data and media using technology.
It was founded in June 2015 (as You & Mr Jones) by former Havas Global CEO David Jones, with a simple mission to help brands do their marketing better, faster and cheaper using technology. It was renamed The Brandtech Group in January 2022.
Today it generates more than $1BN in revenue and is the largest global digital content partner for many of the world's biggest brands and companies, often using its unique in-housing model. It works with eight of the world's top 10 global advertisers and 49 of the world's top 100. Clients include Banco Itaú, Danone, Google, Intuit, LVMH, Microsoft, Morgan-Stanley, Netflix, Reckitt, Renault-Nissan, PayPal, TikTok, Uber and Unilever.
In addition, the Group invests in cutting-edge technology companies relevant to and with potential in marketing and has been investing in the AI, AR and the metaverse space since 2015. The Group was the first external investor in Niantic (creators of Pokémon Go), alongside investments in AI Foundation (AI digital twins, personalized AI, and deep-fake detection 2018), Automat (AI chatbots, 2016), Elsy (AI media planning, 2016), Jivox (dynamic automated content,, 2016), Crossing Minds (deep learning AI recommendation system, 2017), CreativeX (AI-driven content optimization, 2022), Zappar (AR, 2017), Provenance (blockchain, 2022) and GGP (the world's largest gaming fund).
The Group is one of the most prominent marketing industry voices on the prediction and movement to AI-driven marketing, including Generative AI. It was named one of the World's Most Innovative Companies 2021 by Fast Company, and by CB Insights as one of the World's Most Valuable Private Unicorns.
https://www.thebrandtechgroup.com
