Engineering Manager - Next.js

The role

This role leads a small team building the open source Next.js framework used by millions of apps. The position is primarily technical: the lead writes and reviews production code while setting architecture across rendering, caching, routing, and build tooling. People management is a secondary, focused responsibility.

What you would do

• Write production framework code, review pull requests, and debug hard issues
• Drive large technical efforts from design through rollout and production follow-up
• Make architectural calls across rendering, caching, routing, builds, and runtime
• Investigate performance regressions and production failures to ship practical fixes
• Set quality, testing, and observability standards for the team
• Coach engineers through pairing, design reviews, and candid feedback
• Streamline team planning to clarify ownership and speed up delivery
• Coordinate with product, design, and platform teams and engage the open source community
• Take part in hiring and onboarding engineers into the codebase

What they asked for

• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• Prior experience leading engineers or small technical teams in some capacity
• Recent hands-on experience shipping production code
• Strong technical judgment in React, framework internals, or large open source systems
• Experience building developer-facing products or infrastructure with high quality expectations
• Clear written communication and ability to drive technical decisions
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, first-principles problem spaces

Nice to have

• Maintainer or contributor experience on a major open source project, especially React or Next.js
• Background in compilers, bundlers, caching, rendering, or distributed systems
• Experience leading a senior team while still contributing individually
• Experience building a team or technical direction from scratch
• Familiarity with the Next.js codebase