Job Description
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 and maintaining unit tests using MSTest and Moq
- Experience with Azure DevOps for CI/CD
- Production monitoring and alerting experience using DataDog
- Strong system design and troubleshooting skills in live production environments
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Comfortable handling performance management, including difficult conversations when necessary
- Experience working with Agile development methodologies
Strongly Preferred:
- Experience with RabbitMQ or similar message-driven systems
- Strong background in Azure, including: SQL Azure, Azure Web Apps / Services, Azure Service Bus
- Nice to Have
- Experience with containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Some experience with JavaScript, Angular, and TypeScript
- Exposure to or integration experience with marketing platforms such as Marketo
- Experience in regulated or mission-critical domains such as insurance or financial services
Compensation:
- The base salary range for this position is $155,000,000 -$160,000, on a full-time schedule.
- Along with base salary, Trupanion employees may be eligible for monthly bonuses.
- We want all employees to be invested in Trupanion’s success, so we grant Restricted Stock Units to all new team members. Our new hire grants vest over 4 years.
Additional Information
Benefits and Perks:
- Full medical, dental, and vision benefits at no cost to the employee
- Four weeks of paid time off and 9 paid float holidays (you can decide which days are most important to you!)
- Five-week sabbatical after five years of employment
- Open, casual, pet-friendly, and fun office environment
- Free medical health insurance for your pet (1 dog or cat)
- Paid time off to volunteer at nonprofit organizations
- Seattle Office Amenities: Free on-site gym, free dog walking services for office pets during business hours, free parking, and paid ORCA cards.
For more information about Trupanion, visit https://trupanion.com/about
Learn more about how Trupanion has revolutionized our industry and the reimbursement model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdWZ4KHiPTQ
Trupanion is an equal-opportunity employer and embraces diversity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, abilities, perspectives, and skills.
We will ensure that individuals are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodations.
