Engineering Manager (Platform)
Sabanto
Administration
Itasca, IL, USA
Company Description
Sabanto is a venture-backed technology company on a mission to bring autonomy into agriculture. We believe the agriculture industry's lack of labor will drive the adoption of autonomous equipment. It's this very spirit that drives us to build a robotic machinery platform, delivering a system that brings unprecedented efficiency, productivity, and cost savings to farmers. Join our fast-growing, industrious, and passionate team of innovators as we continue to disrupt the multi-billion-dollar agriculture industry.
Job Brief
We are looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to be on the forefront of defining, prototyping and implementing software experiences across a full stack of web, mobile and cloud applications that increase the productivity and safety of vehicle automation within the agricultural industry. Specifically, this role will be focused on Sabanto's Vehicle Mission Control (vMC) platform of products, which consists of a React application and a React Native application, backed by AWS native Node.js and Python services.
Responsibilities and Outcomes
Technical Leadership & Architecture
- Define and own the technical vision for the vMC platform, making architectural decisions across React, React Native, Node.js, and Python services on AWS
- Lead system design reviews, establish coding standards, and drive engineering best practices across the team
- Actively contribute code — writing, reviewing, and shipping production features alongside the team, not just directing from the sideline
- Identify and resolve technical debt strategically, balancing near-term delivery with long-term platform health
- Evaluate and introduce new tools, frameworks, and AWS services that improve reliability, scalability, and developer velocity
Team Growth & People Management
- Hire, onboard, and retain strong engineers; build a team culture of ownership, curiosity, and continuous improvement
- Hold regular 1:1s and conduct meaningful performance reviews; provide direct, actionable feedback that accelerates individual growth
- Identify skill gaps and create development plans that align team members' growth with platform needs
- Mentor engineers from junior to senior, fostering technical depth and career progression
Delivery & Execution
- Own the team's roadmap and sprint execution from planning through release, ensuring consistent, high-quality delivery
- Break down ambiguous product requirements into well-scoped engineering work with clear acceptance criteria
- Track and report on key delivery metrics; proactively surface risks and trade-offs to stakeholders before they become blockers
- Champion testing, observability, and deployment practices that support a regular, reliable release cadence
Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with Product and Operations to align the vMC roadmap with field realities and farmer workflows
- Collaborate with Hardware and Autonomy teams to ensure tight integration between software platform and vehicle systems
- Represent the platform team clearly in leadership forums — communicating progress, capacity, and technical trade-offs
Qualifications
- Education and Experience: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Technology, Electrical Engineering, or a related field. Proven experience as a hands-on leader of small teams with a focus on cloud, web, or mobile applications.
- Hands-On Engineering: You write and ship code regularly. Solid proficiency in at least one of the team's core languages (TypeScript/JavaScript, Python) and a working understanding of the full stack — React or React Native on the front end, Node.js or Python services on the back end. You're comfortable in a pull request, not just a planning doc.
- Cloud Proficiency: Proficiency in cloud-native technologies, including AWS core services (Lambda, API Gateway, RDS/DynamoDB, S3, CloudWatch) to create scalable, observable platforms is required.
- Technical Proficiency: Some proficiency in front-end technologies, including HTML, CSS, TypeScript, and JavaScript, to create web and mobile products is desired. Ability to understand and work within the technical constraints of web and mobile development is desired.
- Architectural Judgment: Experience making system design decisions — API contracts, service boundaries, data modeling, performance trade-offs — and communicating those decisions clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
- Leadership: Grow and mentor team members. Respond to and resolve conflict. Find optimized routes through a series of technical requirements.
- Agile Design Processes: Understands agile methodologies and iterative design processes. Works collaboratively in sprints to deliver high-quality software that meets project timelines and objectives. Can organize teams to scope work and deliver and test releases on a regular cadence.
- Agricultural Familiarity: Familiarity with the agriculture industry or a keen interest in agricultural technologies is preferred. Experience working on projects related to precision agriculture or autonomous machinery is a significant advantage.
- Communication Skills: Excellent verbal and written communication skills. Ability to articulate and document technical decisions clearly and concisely. Strong collaboration skills to work effectively with cross-functional teams.
- Adaptability: Thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced environment. Demonstrate adaptability and the ability to handle evolving project requirements and priorities.
Benefits
At Sabanto, every member of our team moves the needle. With a firm footing in our core company values, we’ve built a fast-paced, demanding work culture that allows for the flexibility, autonomy, and career opportunities you’d expect from a growing company. We offer competitive benefits including:
- Working on a concept that will forever disrupt the agriculture industry
- The chance to make an immediate impact and do the best work of your life
- Vacation and flexible time
- Hybrid work environment (3 days in-office)
- 401k, medical, dental
Our Core Values
- Own It: Be self-driven, entrepreneurial, and efficient
- Raise the Bar: Challenge complacency and mediocrity; be adaptable and agile; details matter
- Be As One: Trust, collaborate, and support; invest in co-workers and customers
- Embrace Curiosity: Always be learning, be curious and share; be humbled but not embarrassed by mistakes
- Do the Right Thing: Act with integrity, even when no one is looking; be transparent
- Empower Farmers: Create solutions where our customers (farmers) win
Additional Information
At Sabanto, we value diversity of culture and background for the benefit of our employees, our products, and our community. Sabanto is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. This position is open to applicants who are legally authorized to work in the United States. We are not able to sponsor work visas at this time.