Software Development Manager

At Stoke, we believe a thriving space economy will enable a vibrant, sustainable, and equitable future here on Earth. That is why we’re building Nova, our fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle. Designed for daily flight, Nova tackles the core challenges of space transportation by reducing cost, increasing availability, and improving reliability. By radically lowering launch costs and increasing flight cadence, we’re helping create a truly scalable space industry. Our team is mission-driven, collaborative, and empowered to take ownership of their work. If you want to work alongside some of the most dedicated and talented people on Earth, we’d love to have you join us. Description Reusable launch systems are the key to seamlessly connecting Earth and space. An instrumental ingredient to making reusable launch vehicles is the ability to move fast. That is our goal for Boltline by Stoke Space , our commercial software platform that helps advanced hardware manufacturing teams integrate, track, iterate, build, and test efficiently . As a S oftware D evelopment M anager on the Boltline by Stoke Space Team , you will lead a team of 6-8 software engineers responsible for a vertical slice of the product. You and your team will accelerate the development of Stoke’s reusable rockets. Your responsibilities and activities will cross three boundaries: (1) Product Ownership and Management , (2) People Management and (3) Individual Contributor. You will be the spokesperson for the team, working closely with external stakeholders and technical leaders on the team. The ideal candidate cares deeply about their team and leads from a place of servitude while driving the team to deliver with quality through repeatable and measurable engineering practices. They embody extreme ownership and have a high degree of autonomy while communicating in a crisp and clear manner. As a product owner you will be responsible for the backlog and active projects on your team. As a People Manager you will be responsible for the career growth, hiring and firing for your team. As an individual contributor you will be expected to contribute to the code base, fixing bugs, implementing features and performing code reviews. This is a Hybrid role, requiring at least 3-days a week on-site at Stoke’s Kent Headquarters. Responsibilities Manage the backlog and active projects for the team Create detailed product requirements and make priority decisions in concert with the strategy of the product team Manage your t eam’s s oftware d evelopment l ife c ycle Manage individual team members ’ career growth and development Manage headcount, interviewing and hiring for the team Contribute production code to the code base, fixing bugs, implementing features and performing code reviews Collaborate with Product and Design to understand priority, focus and scope Collaborate with Team Technical Leader s to improve the technical architecture, improve quality and reduce technical de bt Collaborate and contribute to Technical and Operational excellence across all Boltline Engineering teams Qualifications 8 + years professional software development Strong IC experience in delivering quality SaaS systems Experience in driving product requirements and priority Experience managing and leading strongly technical software developers Excellent verbal/written communication Prior on-call/incident response participation Proven ownership of features from design through production Preferred Qualifications Experience with modern web development frameworks (ReactJS) Experience w ith building reliable APIs Experience with RDBMS Familiarity with Next.js or similar meta-frameworks DevOps basics (Docker, Kubernetes/ECS, AWS) Experience with Apollo (Client/Server), Hasura or similar Hands-on CI/CD experience (GitHub Actions, CircleCI , etc.) Interest in aerospace , mechanical engineering, and manufacturing workflows Benefits Equity – We know that our employees are the reason we succeed. To give everyone a st