So What Do Engineering Managers Do?

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An engineering manager’s role extends far beyond attending meetings or writing reports—it centers on one core responsibility: Ensuring the team delivers. This requires balancing accountability, leadership, and adaptability across multiple domains.

• Facilitate Decision-Making and Own Processes: EMs don’t always make every decision, but they must facilitate the decision-making process and ensure team adherence to defined practices like quality standards or definitions of done.
• Own Delivery Outcomes: Regardless of who does what on the team, the EM is ultimately responsible for all deliverables—both successes and failures.
• Bridge Business and Engineering: EMs connect the technical team with the broader business, helping engineers understand customer needs, product lifecycles, and why building the right thing is more important than just building it right.
• Ensure Product Integrity and Fill Gaps: Maintaining consistent product quality across releases is part of the EM's responsibility. They must also step into roles as needed—whether that’s scrum master, product owner, or project manager—to remove blockers and enable progress.
• Represent the Team and Grow Talent: EMs act as the external face of the team to stakeholders and leadership while also coaching and developing individual engineers to help them grow in their careers.