Principal Software Engineer
•Skimmer· 1d
💻 Engineering⏰ Full-time🎯 Lead / Principal🇺🇸 USA
1d ago
Ashby·5 months ago
Hi! I'm Allie, Head of Support at Ashby. 👋 I have had the privilege of working with an incredible Support Team full of highly knowledgeable, driven team members who care deeply about the success of our customers. One of our key priorities is to scale our Support Team’s ability to resolve deeply technical issues and support complex customers and workflows. That’s why we’re searching for a Support Engineering Manager to grow and shape the future of Support Engineering at Ashby.
This role is not a traditional Support Manager position. We’re looking for someone who has technical depth, is confident diving into complex systems, and can mentor others on complex problem-solving.
In this role, you’ll manage a team of highly skilled Support Engineers, work closely with Engineering to refine escalation and triage practices, and help define how Support Engineering operates at Ashby. We’re looking for a builder with strong instincts who sees inefficiency quickly, takes action, and drives high-leverage improvements without over-engineering solutions.
This is a unique opportunity to oversee our Support Engineering function, collaborate deeply with our Engineering and Product teams, and create scalable processes and systems for technical triage, debugging, and problem-solving. You should be energized by moving fast, experimenting, and making pragmatic decisions, even when you don’t have perfect data. If you love designing systems, building technical teams, and thinking holistically about how support can be a force multiplier across the business, you are in the right place!
As the Support Engineering Manager, you will oversee a technically proficient team responsible for resolving complex product issues, supporting integrations and data workflows, and influencing product decisions through customer insights. This team serves as a key escalation layer for high-priority technical challenges while creating proactive solutions to elevate the broader Support organization.
You’ll play a hands-on role in developing the team’s capabilities, guiding cross-functional processes, and building the systems that will allow Support Engineering to scale effectively as our business grows. Since this is a new function, you’ll have the opportunity to define best practices, establish technical workflows, and build a strong partnership between Support and Engineering from day one.
We need someone who naturally gravitates toward the highest-leverage work by identifying waste, eliminating friction, and raising the technical bar of the team quickly. You should be comfortable being wrong occasionally if it means we’re right most of the time and moving at high velocity.
Lead and develop a team of Support Engineers focused on technical depth, problem-solving, and customer impact.
Foster a culture of ownership, urgency, and high standards where problems are driven to resolution quickly and thoughtfully.
Mentor team members on technical skills including log analysis, database querying, systems architecture, and integration troubleshooting.
Foster a collaborative environment where knowledge-sharing and experimentation are encouraged.
Help define the career path and responsibilities of Support Engineers at Ashby.
Recruit and grow talent with strong technical foundations in reading and understanding code, collaborating on bug reproduction, and working effectively with Engineering teams.
Build scalable, repeatable processes for diagnosing and resolving complex issues related to integrations, APIs, analytics, and product performance.
Set standards for how the team escalates to Engineering, triages bugs, identifies patterns, and partners on long-term solutions.
Create internal tools and workflows that help the team operate with efficiency and consistency.
Balance operational needs with hands-on technical work, staying close by jumping into issues, exploring logs, or conducting hands-on testing when needed to support the team.
Continuously evaluate where time is being spent and ruthlessly prioritize work that drives the most impact for customers and the business.
Ship improvements quickly. Iterate. Raise the bar again.
Collaborate closely with Engineering to shape how technical escalations are managed and how customer insights are tracked and actioned.
Work with Product to provide feedback loops from Support to improve usability and prevent repeat issues.
Serve as an advocate for customers in technical conversations and help Engineering teams understand the support impact of product decisions.
Push for clarity and resolution. When tradeoffs exist, help the team move forward decisively.
Partner with our Support Leadership Team to identify and address gaps in our current tooling, workflows, and diagnostics capabilities.
Use data from escalations and customer feedback to recommend changes that improve team effectiveness and customer outcomes.
Partner with Support leadership to evolve how we measure success in high-complexity support scenarios.
Help scale Support Engineering as a function by documenting approaches, onboarding new team members, and contributing to internal tooling.
Default to action. Build the first version. Improve it in motion.
Proven experience managing or mentoring a Technical Support Team in a B2B SaaS environment.
Demonstrated ability to make high-quality decisions quickly and operate effectively without perfect information.
Background in Software Engineering, Technical Support Engineering, DevOps, or similar highly technical customer-facing roles.
Experience guiding cross-functional collaboration between Support and Engineering.
Familiarity with ATS/HRIS platforms or other enterprise systems is a plus.
Ability to zoom out and identify scalable processes for handling complex technical work.
Strong judgment in prioritizing bugs, customer needs, and internal enablement work.
Comfort operating in ambiguity and creating structure where none exists.
Clear bias toward simplification over over-optimization.
Passionate about improving the customer experience through well-designed, technically sound solutions.
Comfortable representing customer needs in Engineering discussions and advocating for supportability.
Able to hold a high bar for quality while still moving quickly and iterating.
Understands that speed and quality are not opposites and knows how to balance both.
You have strong instincts for what matters most and aren’t afraid to make decisive calls.
You believe velocity compounds and you want to build a team that moves fast and drives value for customers
You thrive in cross-functional environments and love working alongside Engineering teams.
You enjoy solving complex technical problems while enabling others to do the same.
You’re excited by the challenge of making Support scalable, efficient, and high-leverage.
You prefer support models that avoid technical complexity or customer escalations.
You’re uncomfortable operating in fast-evolving systems with undefined processes.
You’re not interested in directly collaborating with Engineering.
You prefer to lead from a high level without digging into the technical details.
You need perfect certainty before acting or prefer prolonged analysis over decisive execution.
Our interview process is thorough — we aim to ensure each person that joins the team is the right fit for Ashby and will provide ample information for you to assess if Ashby is the right fit for you. The process for this role is as follows:
Intro Call with Recruiting - 30 min
Hiring Manager Interview - 45-60 min
Take Home Assessment
VP of Customer Success Interview - 30 min
Founder Interview - 30 min
Peer Interview (Support Leaders) - 60 min
If you're excited about leading a highly technical team, eliminating friction, and shaping the future of Support Engineering at Ashby, we’d love to hear from you!
Here are a few key points (relevant to the go-to-market side) that should give you an idea of what it is like to work with us:
We spend a lot of time building best-in-class products since we believe a highly differentiated product is a lot easier to sell.
We want to offer deep expertise whenever we interact with prospects and customers – whether it be through scaled engagements (e.g. webinars), 1:1 conversations, or through written word (e.g. documentation).
We strongly believe that small teams with very talented people (and the right work environment) deliver much better performance than teams with large headcount. We hire and compensate accordingly.
We value a strong sense of ownership, principled thinking over experience, and thoughtful communication (we put a lot of effort into using the right communication channels) - we’ll get into these and other values during the hiring process.
You’ll get the time to do things the right way; we put a lot of emphasis on high quality work and avoid quick hacks as much as possible.
You get to sell a product that our prospects & customers are truly excited about.
Competitive compensation is offered.
10-year exercise window for stock options. You shouldn’t feel pressure to purchase stock options if you leave Ashby —do it when you feel financially comfortable.
Unlimited PTO with four weeks is recommended per year. Expect “Vacation?” in our one-on-one agenda until you start taking it 😅
Twelve weeks of fully paid family leave in the US. We plan to expand this to employees in other countries as situations arise.
Generous equipment, software, and home office furniture budget. Get what you need to be happy and productive!
$100/month education budget with more expensive items (like conferences) covered with manager approval.
Ashby provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
Ashby is committed to a fair and transparent hiring process. We confirm that this advertisement is for an active, existing vacancy within our organization. Please be advised that we may use artificial intelligence-driven tools to assist our recruitment team in screening, assessing, and selecting candidates for this position.