Senior Engineering Manager

About Wakacje.pl​: 
 
We are an organization that has been fulfilling the travel dreams of Poles for 25 years. Wakacje.pl is the largest e-commerce platform in Poland and a network of travel agencies offering a wide range of travel products. Since 2015, we have been part of Wirtualna Polska Holding – the largest Polish group of media and e-commerce companies. At Wakacje.pl, we offer thousands of domestic and international trips, as well as travel insurance, airport parking, and holiday vouchers. We constantly expand our offer to best meet our customers' needs. If you approach life with #ENERGY, value #HONESTY AND OPENNESS, focus on #CUSTOMER UNDERSTANDING and #COLLABORATION at work, carry out your tasks with high #EFFICIENCY and #RESPONSIBILITY, and want to play a key role in making us #INNOVATIVE – join us! 

About the role: 

We're looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead six engineering teams within a single Agile Release Train (ART). Your closest collaborators will be the technical leaders running each team - developing their skills, removing blockers, and holding them accountable is the core of what you do. 

You'll work closely with Engineering Leaders, Product Owners and Agile Coaches. You are responsible for making sure they work well together and that the engineering perspective has a strong voice at the table. 

In practice: 

• Roughly 50% of your time is spent on leadership: building team capability, handling performance situations, running recruitment, and shaping the culture of the cluster. 

• Around 40% is business-focused - PI planning, tracking progress against objectives, mentoring leaders, and reporting status and risks to the Director of Engineering.  

• The remaining slice is technical: no coding required, but you'll need enough judgment to evaluate trade-offs, oversee architectural decisions, and credibly represent engineering in strategic conversations. 

The environment is complex - 289 microservices, a diverse tech stack, and a scale where cross-team dependencies directly impact delivery. You don't need to be an expert in everything, but you do need to bring structure, clarity, and ownership to a domain where things move fast. 

Key responsibilities:  

Engineering Value Creation  

• Turn business goals into clear engineering actions and measurable results  

• Set and execute clear 6+ month engineering objectives with measurable targets  

• Link engineering work directly to customer and business value  

• Follow our prioritization framework for competing business demands  

• Plan and track team capacity following the business allocation  

• Designing team structures and making decisions about team composition as the organization grows 

Delivery   

• Run initiatives with clear controls for consistent and reliable results  

• Break down work into small, predictable delivery cycles  

• Maintain consistent release cadence with daily deployments  

• Reduce lead time from idea to production through process optimization  

• Monitor and improve cycle time, targeting <3-week completion for typical features  

• Balanced speed and quality of software development   

• Remove bottlenecks to enable smooth, efficient delivery flow 

• Close collaboration with Agile Coaches who facilitate SAFe ceremonies (PI Planning, System Demo, Inspect & Adapt, Scrum of Scrums).  

• Ensuring organizational readiness - capacity, backlogs, and cross-team dependencies 

• Partnering with Product Managers at the ART level - representing the engineering voice in PI Objectives planning and roadmap development 

• Reporting to the Director of Engineering: delivery status, risks, and organizational health. 

Operational Excellence  

• Run solid operations by measuring what matters and fixing issues fast  

• Track and improve system performance using clear metrics  

• Set quarterly targets to enhance operations  

• Lead ART-level planning and coordination across teams  

• Collaborate with Product Management on program backlog and priorities  

• Manage cross-team dependencies and ensure alignment to Program Increments  

• Set and maintain quality standards using SLOs that reflect user experience   

• Spot and address potential issues early on  

• Maintain clear risk escalation and resolution paths  

• Ensure continuity of their cluster’s uninterrupted operations 24/7  

Technical Excellence  

• Set technical standards that help teams build better and faster together  

• Partner with architects to make optimal decisions for the whole platform  

• Familiarity with an environment of 289 microservices and a diverse tech stack -without the need to be an expert in everything 

• Strike the right balance between innovation and stability  

• Boost developer productivity through tools and practices  

• Define and track meaningful technical metrics  

• Turn market insights and customer feedback into technical direction 

• Establishing and enforcing standards for code reviews, testing (unit, integration, E2E), and documentation - in collaboration with leaders and architects 

• Overseeing technical debt: prioritization, PI planning, and communication with product 

Leadership & Talent Development  

• Build strong teams through talent density and clear accountability  

• Hire and retain the top engineering talent  

• Set clear goals with frequent, actionable feedback  

• Build strong collaboration across engineering  

• Encourage open debate and direct communication  

• Handle teams’ performance issues promptly and clearly  

• Handling people-related situations escalated by leaders: conflicts, performance management and offboarding 

• Set high standards that attract strong performers  

• Plan for team growth and succession  

• Support to create and monitor personal development plans  

• Conducting recruitment for leadership positions and supporting leaders in building and completing their teams 

• Building a culture based on ownership, blameless post-mortems, and continuous improvement 

Requirements:

• 10 years’ experience in the IT sector, including over 3 years’ engineering management experience and a strong technical background 

• Experience in a product-focused company or the e-commerce sector  

• Experience in managing team leaders  

• Practical knowledge of Scrum and its ceremonies 

• Technical background in software development (frontend experience would be an advantage) 

• Strong technical judgement - able to evaluate system design decisions, trade-offs, and engineering approaches 

• Ability to handle difficult conversations – with leaders, the product team, and the business. 

• English at least B2 level 

This will be an advantage: 

• Practical knowledge of SAFe or another scaled Agile framework - experience working in an ART 

• Experience working with a team of Agile Coaches / RTEs and an understanding of role distribution

• Experience in the marketplace or travel sector 

• Experience working in a microservices environment (100+ services) 

• Knowledge of tools: Jira, Confluence, Datadog or similar

What do we offer: 

Workplace safety and comfort: 

• Employment based on an employment contract or management agreements 

• Full support during the onboarding period under the supervision of an engaging leader/buddy 

Business agency and agility: 

• Real influence on business decisions, the ability to take initiatives and implement your ideas 

• A real impact on the engineering organization at a company with a turnover of €1 billion  

• Working at the Travel WP Group: Travelplanet, Invia CEE, Wakacje.pl – during a merger and transformation  

• You’ll be joining a company with a well-known brand and ambitions for further growth – a place where there is still much to build and plenty of scope for initiative 

Development within the organization: 

• Individual Development Plan 

• Support with SAFe certification 

All-inclusive for Employees: 

• A benefits package that you can use according to your preferences – Lux Med medical care, Health and Life Insurance (PZU and Warta), Multisport card, shopping and lunch vouchers, and many other cafeterias offers available on the Worksmile platform 

• Discounts on our products for employees and their families 

• Work in the modern Alchemia office complex - Neon building, 100 meters from the Gdańsk Przymorze-Uniwersytet SKM station 

• Work in a hybrid model: working partly from the office 

• Teambuilding events for the start and end of the tourist season - check them out: Instagram, LinkedIn, Tiktok, Facebook 

• Casual dress code 

Ready to join the team with a #travelmindset? We’re waiting for you!