Junior Engineering Manager Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Location: San Francisco, CA (5 days/week onsite)

About The Role At Mochi, our engineering team operates with exceptional leverage. We believe in high talent density, where a focused, pragmatic team powers a profitable, nine-figure ARR healthcare platform serving hundreds of thousands of patients. We are looking for an Engineering Manager to help us scale, align, and unblock this organization.

Mochi has already helped patients lose over 5 million pounds through metabolic care, and we are now rapidly expanding into the frontiers of preventative healthcare. To support this growth, we are actively leveling up our engineering maturity-pairing our ambitious, early-career engineers with incoming Senior and Staff-level talent to build our next generation of clinical systems.

At Mochi, engineering is deeply integrated with our clinical and operational teams. We do not operate in silos. We need an Engineering Manager who is a true collaborative partner: someone who excels at mentoring junior developers, recruiting senior talent, maintaining a culture of high technical craft, and working directly with clinical leadership to co-design solutions for massive healthcare challenges. If you are a deeply technical leader who meets engineers where they are and cares profoundly about patient outcomes, this is the role.

What You'll Do

• Mentor and Scale the Team: You will be a hands-on technical leader who takes deep pride in team growth. While you won't be on the critical path for daily feature delivery, you will be in the codebase-reviewing PRs, pairing with junior engineers to unblock them, and actively recruiting top-tier Senior and Staff engineers to raise the team's overall technical ceiling.
• Drive Alignment & Velocity: You will manage a team with a diverse mix of experience levels. Your job is to provide crystal-clear business context, ensure technical efforts are perfectly aligned with the product roadmap, and proactively clear organizational roadblocks to maintain relentless shipping velocity.
• Co-Design the Clinical Product: You will partner deeply with Operations, Product, and Clinical leadership. You will act as a collaborative translation layer-distilling complex medical realities and regulatory workflows into clear, pragmatic technical roadmaps for your team.
• Elevate the Craft & Govern AI: Mochi is an AI-first engineering org where developers utilize frontier agentic models (e.g., Codex 5.3, Claude Opus 4.6) daily. You will manage the risks of this high-speed environment, ensuring AI-assisted output is rigorously audited for edge cases, performance bottlenecks, and HIPAA compliance, maintaining deep pride in the quality of the systems we build.
• Foster a High-Ownership Culture: You will ensure context is shared fluidly across the entire platform. Through direct feedback, empathetic mentorship, and clear performance management, you will cultivate a team of low-ego, versatile builders who care deeply about patient outcomes.

Who You Are

• You are a pragmatic team builder and mentor. You have a track record of identifying and recruiting top engineering talent, but you are equally passionate about coaching early-career developers and taking them to the next level. Engineers you have managed in the past actively want to work for you again.
• You have immense technical credibility. You are a former Senior or Staff engineer who has built and operated high-stakes distributed systems. You can read complex codebases, audit architectures, and command the technical respect of your team.
• You possess deep product sense. You have 2+ years of formal engineering management experience. You care just as much about the user experience, clinical workflows, and business outcomes as you do about the underlying infrastructure.
• You navigate domain complexity. You have managed teams in highly regulated, operationally heavy industries (e.g., healthcare, fintech, logistics) where failures have real-world consequences.
• You manage through context, not control. You thrive on giving your engineers autonomy tailored to their experience level. You set the business goals, define the architectural guardrails, and empower your team to own the execution.
• You are a collaborative partner. You have low ego, high standards, and excellent cross-functional communication skills. You know how to collaborate with non-technical stakeholders to build shared solutions.
• You are excited to work in-person. You want to build and lead your team on the floor, 5 days a week in our San Francisco office.

Our Process 

We respect your time. Here is exactly what to expect:

• Intro call (30 min, remote) - Chat with our recruiter about the role and expectations.
• Leadership screen (45 min, remote) - Discuss your management philosophy, coaching experience, and mutual fit with the Head of Engineering.
• Technical & Architecture round (2.5 hrs, remote) - Deep-dive system design conversation and architectural review. Real domain problems, assessing how you guide technical decisions and evaluate tradeoffs.
• Team meet (2 hrs 15 mins, on-site) - Come to our SF office to meet the engineers you will be leading and supporting, alongside cross-functional partners and executive leadership for 30-minute 1:1s, concluding with a quick recruiter wrap-up.

We are ready to move as fast as you are. Total interview time is ~6 hours. We can go from the first intro to offer in two weeks, or pace the rounds to comfortably fit your current work schedule.

Time to Recharge - Enjoy unlimited PTO, generous company holidays, and true flexibility. We trust you to take the time you need to rest, reset, and thrive

Wellness First - From weekly mindfulness sessions to group workouts and fitness perks, your physical and mental health are top priority

 Team Socials and Community - We make time to connect through regular socials, happy hours, and spontaneous events. Our stocked kitchen doesn't hurt either

 Downtown SF HQ - Our San Francisco office is just steps from BART, Muni, and great food. It's designed for deep work and casual collaboration

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The base salary for this full-time position ranges from $280,000-$350,000, in addition to compelling equity and benefits. The salary range listed in each job posting represents the minimum and maximum targets for new hire salaries across all locations. Actual compensation within this range is determined by various factors, such as job-related skills, experience, relevant education or training, and location.