Manager Software Development

Company Description

Trupanion is a leading provider of medical insurance for cats and dogs across North America. Our mission is to help caring pet owners plan and budget for their pets’ medical needs. We offer a collaborative, casual, and pet-friendly environment where engineers are empowered to build reliable, mission-critical systems at scale. 

Job Description

We are seeking a highly hands-on Software Engineering Manager to lead teams responsible for building, operating, and evolving mission-critical platforms. This role is ideal for a leader who remains deeply technical, actively contributes to architecture and code, and takes ownership of production outcomes. 

This is not a purely managerial role. Success requires strong technical judgment, direct involvement in engineering execution, and a passion for building resilient systems while developing high-performing technical teams. 

This position is open to candidates in the Seattle area. You will have a hybrid remote/in-office schedule where you will work from our casual, pet-friendly office at least 3 days a week.  

Key Responsibilities: 

Hands-On Technical Leadership:

• Serve as a hands-on technical leader, actively contributing to system design, architecture, code reviews, and implementation 
• Bring deep expertise in C#, .NET Framework, and .NET Core, applying best practices directly to production systems 
• Drive an AI-forward engineering culture, bringing demonstrated experience with AI tools such as Codex or Claude Code to improve developer efficiency and throughput
• Apply SOLID principles, object-oriented design, and established design patterns to build maintainable, scalable software 
• Lead development of RESTful APIs and backend services 
• Guide teams in effective use of asynchronous programming patterns (async/await) and distributed processing 
• Leverage AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude, Codex, Copilot) to improve personal effectiveness and evangelize responsible usage across teams 
• Partner with senior engineers and architects to evolve systems while maintaining stability and operational excellence 

Production Ownership & Incident Management: 

• Own the health, reliability, and operational readiness of production systems 
• Lead and personally contribute to production incident resolution, including hands-on debugging 
• Drive structured incident response, root cause analysis, and preventative actions 
• Establish and maintain monitoring, alerting, and observability practices using DataDog 
• Ensure teams are prepared for on-call rotations and production support responsibilities 

Execution & Delivery:

• Ensure work is well-scoped, well-designed, and delivered predictably 
• Hold teams accountable for quality, test coverage, and long-term maintainability 
• Ensure unit testing practices using MSTest and Moq are consistently followed 
• Drive a shift-left mindset, encouraging quality, security, and operational thinking early in development 
• Promote continuous improvement through innovation, experimentation, and adoption of new technologies (including AI) 

Best Practices, Standards & Compliance:

• Define and enforce coding standards and software development best practices 
• Ensure compliance with relevant security and regulatory frameworks (e.g., ISO, SOX, PCI DSS) 
• Stay current on evolving software, security, and data protection trends 
• Champion secure coding practices and operational excellence 

Cross-Team Collaboration & Leadership:

• Work effectively with engineering, product, operations, and business stakeholders 
• Navigate competing priorities and align teams toward clear technical outcomes 
• Influence through credibility, clarity, and technical leadership 
• Communicate technical risks, trade-offs, and production impacts clearly to leadership 

Talent Leadership & Mentorship: 

• Recruit, hire, and retain high-performing engineers 
• Personally assess technical depth, problem solving, and ownership during interviews 
• Build a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous learning 
• Mentor engineers at all levels with strong emphasis on technical growth and system thinking 
• Develop senior engineers into future technical leaders 

Qualifications: 

Required:

• 3+ years as a Software Engineering Manager or Tech Lead with hands-on responsibilities 
• Strong expertise in C# / .NET, including .NET Framework and .NET Core 
• Solid understanding and applied experience with SOLID principles, Object-oriented design & design patterns, REST APIs, SQL and relational database design 
• Experience building an