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Virginia, United States
Hybrid
About Obviant
The defense market is surging, but the data that drives it hasn't kept up. Companies, government, and investors are forced into heavily manual processes, stitching together hundreds of disparate sources to make decisions that carry real national security weight.
Obviant has built the data source of truth and the AI tooling for defense acquisition. We fuse thousands of structured and unstructured sources into a coherent picture of budget, programs, and the organizations running them. We have high satisfaction at top-tier customers, we're growing fast, we're backed by leading venture funds, and we're advised by veterans from national security and the technology industry.
The Role
We're hiring a Senior Engineering Manager to own one team end to end either our data engineering team or our product/web application team, depending on where your strengths land. You'll inherit an existing team and, as we grow, help expand it. Your hiring bar becomes the team's bar.
This is not a coordination role. You'll set the technical bar, run the delivery cadence, grow the engineers on your team, and stay close enough to the code to earn their respect.
We set obsessively high standards, and here that isn't a slogan. Our customers make acquisition and investment decisions on what we show them, so being roughly right is not a viable product. Others might say we're too particular about it. That's fine we're running our own race, not theirs.
We're looking for someone who pairs technical excellence with the ability to extend that practice into a team leader who stays credible in the work while multiplying it through others.
What You'll Own
Four areas below, with the understanding that the list is never complete. Nobody here says "that isn't my job."
Technical leadership
Set technical direction with your senior engineers, and guide the team through design tradeoffs, architecture decisions, and implementation quality
Own the engineering standards and the quality bar you decide what "good" means on your team and make it stick, without becoming the bottleneck
Raise the bar of the whole team, not just your own output. Mentor, review, and build a culture where quality is the default rather than a checklist someone enforces
Drop into a tactical role when it's the fastest way to unblock the team or land a business-critical outcome. Do, don't say
People growth
Develop engineers deliberately: real growth plans, direct feedback on a real cadence, and clear leveling conversations
Keep it all in the open. Deliver hard feedback with candor and empathy, face to face, never through backchannels
Make the hard calls with care and spine diagnose underperformance early, coach honestly, and handle exits with dignity for the person and clarity for the team
Hire and expand the team as we grow, holding the bar under pressure to fill seats
Manage up as well as down. Keep leadership and your peers ahead of what's coming, escalate early, and make sure nobody is ever caught off guard by your team's direction or risks
Team operations & delivery
Reach for culture before process. Ownership, high accountability, and zero excuses solve more than any ritual will add process only where culture alone can't carry the weight
Keep the rituals you do have honest: co-create them with the team, cut what's theater, and improve estimation and predictability over time
Run retros that close the loop improvements that ship and stick, not a list nobody revisits
Manage to a small set of meaningful health and delivery metrics, and guard against gaming them (velocity is a diagnostic, never a target)
Product & business alignment
Partner with whoever sits closest to the customer for your team Product, Design, and GtM if you're leading product engineering; analysts, AI/ML, and data consumers if you're leading data engineering. The partners shift; the customer obsession doesn't
Translate mission and business goals into clear engineering outcomes, and be able to explain to anyone how your team's work moves the business
Push back with conviction, clarity, and a willingness to have your mind changed
Keep the team focused and healthy when priorities shift, without becoming a silo
What We're Looking For
Required
7+ years of engineering experience, including substantial time leading and growing engineering teams
Real technical depth you can still demonstrate you can reason through a system design, spot the failure modes, and say what you'd cut to ship first
A track record of owning delivery for a team: planning, estimation, and reliable execution, including holding the line on performance, scalability, and technical debt
Direct experience with the hard parts of management hard feedback that landed, a struggling performer you diagnosed and worked, a real exit you ran well
Strong communication in every direction. You can push back on leadership, explain technical work to a non-technical audience, coach engineers, and over communicate before anyone has to ask
Comfortable with high autonomy and accountability in a fast-moving, early-stage environment. You're at home in ambiguity and you don't wait for direction
Strong references from current and prior roles
Nice to have
Experience building complex data or AI systems large-scale ingestion, pipeline orchestration, schema evolution, entity resolution or managing fast-moving web application teams
Background in government, defense tech, or another regulated environment
An active TS/SCI clearance, or eligibility to obtain one
Experience owning platform-level infrastructure from initial design through scaling it across multiple teams
How You'll Operate Here
Four traits show up in everything we do, and we'll probe for all four when we talk:
Bias for action: you move decisively with incomplete information. Action is the best medicine
Strong opinions, loosely held: you argue a clear point of view, then update quickly when the evidence changes. Intellectual honesty over ego
Continuous improvement: you measure how your team works, run real feedback loops, and close them
People growth: you develop engineers, give direct feedback, and handle the hard calls with both care and spine
Our Principles
We live these every day. If they don't sound like you, this won't be a fit and we'd both rather know now.
Impact. Our work matters. We take a lot of pride in building to advance mission outcomes.
Overdeliver. We go above and beyond in everything we do - creating products and serving our users
Hustle. We get stuff done, no matter what it takes.
Empathy. Our users’ problems are our own. We don't push products, we solve problems.
Humility. We’re not afraid to admit what we don’t know. Our job is to listen and grow.
Integrity. Transparency & respect above all else. It’s non-negotiable, even when it isn't easy
Benefits & Structure
We’re a tight-knit team headquartered in Arlington, VA. We work in the office together most days, and believe being in the same place is a competitive advantage.
Flexible schedule - We all have other things going on in our lives. Doctor visits, kids’ activities, dog walks - take care of it whenever you have to. And work from home when you need to.
Sizeable equity - We’re building something with massive upside potential, and you’ll have ownership in that. This is ours.
Flexible vacation time - Use what you want, as long as you’re taking care of what needs to get done.
Full health, dental, and vision insurance.
To apply, visit obviant.com/careers
Obviant is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.