Engineering Manager (Upcoming Apps Portfolio & VPN) (Remote)

Remote · Remote · full time · Management

Listed on Mode’s own careers site. You apply with them directly — we never stand between you and the employer.

What this role is

This is a hands-on engineering manager role leading a newly acquired VPN product team through integration and growth at Mode, a fast-growing AI and mobile apps company. The position suits someone with 8+ years of engineering experience and 2+ years of people management who can code review and debug production issues while building teams, establishing operational standards, and creating a playbook for future acquisitions.

Our summary, not Mode’s wording. The full posting is on their site.

Skills this role names

What they ask for

Required

8+ years of professional software engineering experience
2+ years managing engineers as a people manager or tech lead in agile environments delivering consumer products
Hands-on technical expertise in at least one of: native mobile (Android/iOS), backend services (Go/Python/Node.js), or infrastructure/DevOps
Experience leading or contributing to a technical acquisition, migration, or takeover of a live product
Track record of raising engineering quality on inherited systems through testing, CI/CD, code review, and documentation
Agentic AI proficiency with practical experience using AI coding agents for development and investigation
Candid and empathetic communication with ability to convey status, risks, and trade-offs to executives
Experience building and operating large-scale systems and leading technical direction for a team

Nice to have

Experience running a consumer VPN, proxy, or privacy product including restrictive network environments
Experience managing distributed, remote, multi-timezone teams
Experience with subscription businesses and in-app purchases
Experience with vendor and cost management across multiple cloud providers
Compliance program experience (SOC 2, GDPR, CCPA) and security audits
Experience building an acquisition-integration playbook or engineering standards program