Engineering Manager

At Dealr, Inc., we’re reshaping the automotive industry with two dynamic offerings: dealr.cloud and Dealer Title Solutions (DTS). As a forward-thinking SaaS company, we provide dealr.cloud, an all-in-one management solution that’s helping independent dealerships streamline their operations and support their revenue growth. Meanwhile, DTS, born from our rich heritage of automotive expertise, is transforming Colorado’s title and registration processes with a sleek, electronic approach.

Why join us? Our Colorado-based team is passionate, talented, and customer-focused. We’re proud to offer innovative, user-friendly software solutions that revolutionize dealership operations—whether it’s through dealr.cloud’s comprehensive management capabilities or DTS’s seamless electronic title processing. We’re growing rapidly and expanding our reach, with a stable market share and a commitment to driving continuous improvement.

By joining our team, you’ll be an integral part of our journey toward innovation, directly shaping the future of the industry and enabling dealership success every day.

Check us out:

dealr.cloud: https://dealr.cloud

Dealer Title Solutions: https://dealertitlesolutions.com

Engineering Manager
As the Engineering Manager at Dealr, you play a pivotal role in building and leading the newly established Engineering department. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will be hands-on in the codebase while concurrently driving strategic technical decisions and fostering a high-quality engineering culture. In this full-stack role, you’ll work closely with the Product Manager and other stakeholders to align development priorities, manage project timelines, and ensure successful execution of key initiatives. Your technical expertise, leadership, and ability to balance high-level strategy with detailed code contributions will be crucial as you shape and grow the engineering team from the ground up.

As a key technical leader, you are responsible for ensuring the quality and reliability of our codebase, implementing development best practices, and establishing processes that promote efficiency and scalability. In addition to driving day-to-day technical operations, you will be a key player in product development, working closely with the CEO and Product Manager to translate product visions into actionable technical plans.

The new Engineering department will consist of this role and a Senior Software Engineer, whom we plan to hire simultaneously. You will report to the CEO who is solely responsible for the product design and development of the entire platform to date. You will be coming into an established company with over 30 employees and in a stable growth stage. We’re entirely self-funded through revenue and have been bootstrapped through the startup stage into our current stable position. As we set ourselves for further growth, it’s critical we have further development capacity and the ability to move code responsibility off our CEO. The CEO will remain “head of technology” and “head of product,” however those roles will primarily consist of making strategic decisions for the code base. This role will work closely with our Product Manager, who has been with the company for 4 years and is a technical leader in the organization; the Product Manager will communicate the majority of product requirements and bring an intense awareness of how the product currently operates.

What you’ll do:

• Build and lead the engineering department: Establish and implement the foundational processes, tools, and culture for a high-functioning engineering team. Develop a roadmap for the growth of the department as Dealr scales.

• Hands-on coding and technical leadership: Actively contribute to the codebase, working on both front-end and back-end development, and ensuring the overall architecture supports scalability, maintainability, and performance.

• Drive technical strategy and decision-making: Collaborate with the CEO and other stakeholders to make key architectural decisions and set the direction for the platform’s future development. Ensure technical decisions align with the long-term goals of the business.

• Facilitate code review and quality assurance: Oversee code reviews to maintain high standards of quality, consistency, and security. Set up guidelines for coding best practices and ensure adherence to them across the team.

• Manage development timelines and project delivery: Act as the primary project manager for the engineering department, coordinating with the Product Manager and stakeholders to define development priorities, manage timelines, and ensure on-time delivery of high-quality releases.

• Collaborate on product vision and development: Work closely with the Product Manager to understand project requirements and user stories, define technical solutions, and ensure alignment between technical implementation and product vision.

• Develop testing and release processes: Establish CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and release management processes that ensure efficient, reliable, and secure product deployments.

• Establish and manage technical infrastructure: Oversee cloud infrastructure, ensuring scalability, cost-efficiency, and reliability across all deployed environments. Ensure the infrastructure is capable of supporting future growth and complexity.

• Mentor and develop engineering talent: As the department grows, recruit, mentor, and develop junior engineers, fostering a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and technical excellence.

• Ensure cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with other departments, such as Product, Sales, and Support, to ensure engineering efforts align with business needs and provide technical guidance for various cross-functional projects.

• Monitor and manage technical debt: Regularly review the state of the codebase to identify and prioritize areas of technical debt, and ensure the team proactively addresses these to improve system performance and stability.

• Champion innovation and best practices: Stay up-to-date with industry trends and technologies, continuously driving improvements to engineering practices, tooling, and infrastructure to enhance team productivity and product quality.

Who you are:

• A Strategic Leader: You can think both tactically and strategically, guiding the technical direction of the company while managing day-to-day operations.

• Hands-On Technical Expert: You’re not just a manager—you’re actively engaged in coding, architecture, and problem-solving. You lead by example with your technical expertise.

• A Skilled Project Manager: You are highly organized and can manage multiple projects, teams, and timelines. You excel at keeping projects on track and ensuring that milestones are met.

• A Great Collaborator: You work closely with stakeholders, especially the Product Manager, and communicate clearly across departments to ensure alignment and smooth execution of projects.

• A Code Quality Advocate: You are passionate about high-quality code, automation, and best practices, ensuring that every release meets rigorous standards of reliability and performance.

• A Mentor and Builder: You’re excited to grow and lead a team, providing guidance and fostering a positive, productive engineering culture where everyone thrives.

This is a full-time position. Dealr, Inc. provides a 3-2 hybrid work model in which employees are given the opportunity to work from their dedicated home workspace for two days per week on Tuesdays and Fridays after the first month of in-office training. The typical work schedule will be from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm on weekdays with additional hours as necessary. This salaried position requires at least 40 hours per week and may require on-call time for infrequent issues.

Benefits:

• Medical Insurance

• Dental Insurance

• Vision Insurance

• Flex Spending Account

• Life Insurance

• Colorado Secure Savings (Retirement)

• Paid Holidays

• Paid Time Off (vacation/sick)

• Hybrid Work from Home Schedule (after initial 30 days)

• Years of Experience: 7+ years of engineering experience, including 2+ in a leadership role.

• Experience with VCS: Advanced knowledge of Git and GitHub for codebase management.

• Development Environment: Deep experience with macOS and JetBrains IDEs.

• Cloud Infrastructure: Extensive experience with AWS, including ECS and RDS.

• Backend Development:

  • Expert-level proficiency in PHP and API architecture.

  • Strong experience with NodeJS microservices.

• Frontend Development: In-depth knowledge of AngularJS (v1) and experience with VueJS.

• Database: Extensive experience with MySQL and PostgreSQL.

• CI/CD & Testing: Proven experience implementing CI/CD and automated testing.

• Project Management: Experience managing development timelines and cross-functional projects.

• Security & Scalability: Strong understanding of security, infrastructure, and scaling.

• Formal Education: Bachelor’s degree in a technology-related field.

Message from the CEO:

Hello! Thanks for reviewing our job description, and reading this message. While a bit untraditional, I wanted to put a short note into the job descriptions for our new Engineering department because the stage we are at as a company is unusual and you might be thinking “30 employees and only the CEO as the coder?” and I would love to answer that now!

Up until this stage, we have been focused on growth, and I managed the full development stack from product, UI/UX design, graphics design, frontend/backend/database, infrastructure, strategy, etc. We had brought entry-level devs in early in the company, however their experience level was not at a level where they could be self-sufficient. Until now, we didn’t feel the need to allocate the substantive resources it would take to bring on an engineering department with the right senior staff, and we wanted to ensure we did it right, which is where we are today!

I’m incredibly excited about these positions and the ability to transition code ownership to other very talented people. Also, I’m ready for it! I love coding, innovating, and building amazing solutions for our clients, but I’m also pulled in many different directions and we will serve both our team and our clients better through a well-designed Engineering department.

Last thing: tech debt. I’m airing our (my) dirty laundry here as I would want transparency if I were applying for a position like this. I’m a self-taught developer (Graduate of StackOverflow University) who solved real business problems for myself at my family’s automobile dealership and converted those solutions into a software company. We have tech debt, like any company, and I’m committed to providing resources to pay it down and make incredible software that is easy to test, maintain, and work on. Right now, there’s work needed, but you also would have a CEO who won’t have to be convinced to fix tech debt - I’m ready! Biggest categories: 1) the front-end is built on AngularJS (v1) and needs a rebuild 2) unit and integration testing is nearly non-existent, and 3) low comment coverage, which is primarily due to our lack of an engineering team previously, but also something that I will be involved with to get the code-base up-to-snuff. A few things we’ve done a great job with: 1) CD pipeline with AWS and containers for consistent, replicable, and maintainable infrastructure, 2) SOC2 Type II certification, as we’ve worked heavily on security and good security fundamentals, and 3) user facing documentation describing how the product should work in various circumstances.

What I will tell you is that we have an amazing product and customer experience, and have built incredibly innovative solutions over the years. Myself and our entire team are passionate about the product we provide, and the market we serve, and we truly believe we provide the best product on the market. I’m excited to take this company to the next level, and for you to be a part of doing it. I’m committed to the next stage of development - Are you up for the challenge?

I look forward to meeting you!

Forrest Middleton
Founder + CEO