Manager Software Development

Overview

Trupanion is a leading provider of medical insurance for cats and dogs in North America. Our mission is to help loving, responsible pet owners budget and care for their pets. At Trupanion, we offer a collaborative, casual, and pet-friendly environment where everyone is encouraged to be themselves.

This position is open to candidates in the Seattle, WA 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. 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.

• 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 Data Dog
  • 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

• 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 Dev Ops for CI/CD
• Production monitoring and alerting experience using Data Dog
• 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

• Experience with Rabbit
  
  MQ or similar message-driven systems
• Strong background in Azure, including: SQL Azure, Azure Web Apps / Services, Azure Service Bus
• Experience with containerized environments (Docker,…