Structures and Functions of Engineering of Manager, Senior Manager, Director, and VP

Software Engineering Manager

An engineering manager oftern manages a team of 6-12 engineers, a.k.a. 1 to 2 pizza teams

• Staff Engineers / IC4 Optional (1–2): Often spans across teams, leads initiatives, sets engineering standards, and may report to the EM or Director. Often manages 5 ICs to deliver 1 to 2 specific projects.
• Senior Engineers / IC3 (2–3): Trusted to lead parts of systems. Owns features end-to-end, mentors others, drives architecture, often leads small efforts. If staff engineers are missing in the team, seniors would be the tech leads.
• Mid-level Engineers / IC2 (3–4): Can break down features, handle ambiguity, contribute to system design and delivery.
• Junior Engineer / IC1 (1–2): Task-focused, needs close mentorship, responsible for tickets with well-defined scope.

Daily tasks include:

Task	% Time	Description
1:1s with team members	15–20%	Weekly or bi-weekly 1:1s, usually 30 mins each; focus on growth, feedback, blockers.
Standups / Team check-ins	5–10%	Daily syncs or async updates to track progress and unblock issues.
Sprint planning / Retrospectives	5–10%	Biweekly planning, retros, and prioritization with product/engineering.
Project coordination	15–20%	Aligning with product/design/QA, scoping work, ensuring timelines are realistic.
Technical review / decision making	10–15%	Design docs, PR reviews, architecture discussions, ensuring technical direction.
Mentorship & coaching	5–10%	Helping engineers grow in skill and scope.
Stakeholder communication	10–15%	Status updates to leadership, product, or cross-functional peers.
Hiring / Interviews	5–10%	Reviewing resumes, conducting interviews, leveling candidates.
Firefighting / incident response	0–5%	On-call escalation, incident review (if occurs).
Admin / Performance mgmt	5–10%	Reviews, calibration, goal setting, timesheets, documentation.

Senior Engineering Manager

A senior manager often manages an around 25-person organziation:

• Engineering Managers / M1 (2-4): Manages the team's ICs, IC1, IC2, IC3, and sometimes IC4
• Staff Engineers / IC4 (1–2): Often spans across teams, leads initiatives, sets engineering standards, and may report to the EM or Director.
  • Senior Engineers / IC3 (2–3): Trusted to lead parts of systems. Owns features end-to-end, mentors others, drives architecture, often leads small efforts.
  • Mid-level Engineers / IC2 (3–4): Can break down features, handle ambiguity, contribute to system design and delivery.
  • Junior Engineers / IC1 (1–2): Task-focused, needs close mentorship, responsible for tickets with well-defined scope.

Focuses on:

• Org health: Morale, engagement, retention, and DEI across teams.
• Delivery at scale: Ensure multi-team priorities and coordination on shared timelines.
• Leadership pipeline: Mentoring M1, IC3, IC4 into future leaders.
• Architecture alignment: Approving or steering cross-team technical decisions.
• Operational excellence: Incident response, velocity metrics, and productivity tools.
• Stakeholder management: Representing the org to execs and cross-functional partners.

Daily tasks include:

Task	% Time	Description
1:1s with EMs / Tech Leads	20–25%	Coaching, unblocking, checking team health, performance feedback.
Strategic planning	10–15%	Quarter roadmapping with product/design, aligning goals across multiple teams.
Program/project reviews	10–15%	Monitoring key initiatives, timelines, resourcing, interdependencies.
Cross-functional syncs	10–15%	Meetings with PMs, Designers, Data, QA, GTM, or other Eng leads.
Hiring / Team growth	10–15%	Interviewing senior candidates, evaluating team structure, headcount planning.
Performance calibration / reviews	5–10%	Working with HR/leadership on leveling, compensation, feedback loops.
Org/process improvement	5–10%	Driving improvements in velocity, planning, engineering quality, team health.
Escalation / incident mgmt	0–5%	Triage when issues span multiple teams or impact executive visibility.

Director of Engineering

A director often manages a 30–100+ organziation:

• Engineering Managers / M1 (1-2): Manages the team's ICs, IC1, IC2, IC3, and sometimes IC4
• Senior Engineering Managers / M2 (1-2): Manages M1 and IC4

Needs to have:

• Strong operational mindset – Builds systems that scale decision-making and execution.
• Clear communicator – Connects the “why” at the exec level to actionable goals for teams.
• Coach of coaches – Spends time developing senior leaders under them.
• Calm under pressure – Helps orgs manage ambiguity and chaos gracefully.
• Owns the outcome – Takes responsibility when things fail, gives credit when they succeed.

Focuses on:

• Org strategy & vision: Translate business goals into technical roadmaps across orgs.
• Leadership development: Identify and coach M2, M1 and IC4.
• Execution excellence: Create a system where multi-team execution is predictable and high quality.
• Cross-org collaboration: Work with peer directors and VPs in Product, Design, Data, and GTM.
• Culture & communication: Set tone, values, and communication style for the broader org.
• Tech direction: Approve or influence tech-wide decisions, but don’t usually dive into detailed code or architecture unless it’s strategic.
• Delivery: Ultimately accountable for how your org delivers, not just what it ships.

Daily tasks include:

Task	% Time	Description
1:1s with Sr. EMs / EMs / IC4 Ocassionally	20%	Coaching, aligning on org health, succession planning, feedback.
Strategic leadership	20%	OKRs, long-term org design, planning roadmaps with exec team.
Cross-functional exec meetings	15%	Partnering with Product, Design, Data, Sales, Marketing, etc.
Org-level operations	15%	Defining best practices, delivery frameworks, quality bars, incident protocols.
Hiring and org shaping	10–15%	Recruiting senior leaders, shaping interview processes, diversity goals.
Budgeting and headcount planning	5–10%	Working with Finance on resourcing, infrastructure costs.
Escalations / Incident mgmt	0–5%	Step in only for major org-wide or cross-org incidents.
External visibility / recruiting	0–5%	Occasionally speaking at conferences, writing blogs, helping recruit senior talent.

VP of Engineering

A VP often manages a 100–300+ organziation:

• Directors (1-4): Manages M2 and M1
• Technical Staffs / Architects / Scholars (1-3): Advice and scale systems, and focus on special projects.

Needs to have:

• Strategic thinker – Understands how to turn business needs into scalable tech strategy.
• Exceptional communicator – Keeps alignment flowing top-down and bottom-up.
• Builder of orgs – Knows how to scale from 30 → 300 engineers while keeping clarity and performance.
• Strong EQ – Manages exec politics, team morale, and people growth simultaneously.
• Balances delivery with quality – Doesn’t sacrifice speed for stability or vice versa — brings frameworks to harmonize both.

Focuses on:

• Vision & Strategy: Translate company goals into an engineering vision. Define how technology becomes a competitive advantage.
• Org Design: Scale the team with the right roles, leveling, spans of control, reporting lines.
• Execution & Delivery: Make sure multiple teams can ship consistently and predictably.
• Culture & Values: Set and reinforce how people treat each other, what good work looks like, and how decisions are made.
• Hiring Bar & Team Health: Own the bar and diversity strategy across the org.
• Engineering Brand: Help position the company externally (blogs, conferences, open source).
• Technical Stewardship: Doesn’t code, but still deeply understands systems and architecture tradeoffs.
• Risk Management: Owns technical risk, incident management, quality, security, scalability, and compliance.

Daily tasks include:

Task	% Time	Description
Executive team alignment	20–25%	Partner with CEO, CPO, CTO, and other execs on company strategy, roadmaps, GTM.
Org-wide engineering leadership	15–20%	Set engineering strategy, architecture direction, org design, delivery model.
1:1s with Directors/Sr. EMs	15–20%	Coaching, unblocking, performance management, succession planning.
Cross-org communication	10–15%	Communicate plans, changes, and progress to the entire org.
Hiring and recruiting	10%	Attract and close senior engineering leaders.
Budget and resourcing	5–10%	Work with Finance and Ops on headcount, tooling, infra, and vendor budgets.
External partnerships	5%	Work with vendors, partners, or occasionally investors or press.
Crisis / escalation management	5%	Intervene in major incidents, but mostly focus on creating systems to avoid them.