We’re a high-growth software company with a big mission: empowering K-12 district teams to do more with less.
At LINQ, we get K12. That’s why we help districts transform K-12 school operations with best-in-class, cloud-based software solutions built to help districts return more resources to classrooms. Integrating finance, HR, nutrition management, and payments into a single, secure platform, LINQ reduces administrative burden. LINQ is trusted by 30% of school districts across the U.S. to help them operate more efficiently and serve over 1 billion meals to 17 million students annually, process payroll for 364,000 educators, administrators, and staff, and engage with millions of families through the free LINQ Connect app.
Our team? They’re talented, committed, and fiercely loyal problem-solvers. At LINQ, you’ll find challenging and meaningful work, a team that respects and uplifts one another, and a commitment to constant improvement. Our customers love us because we’re attentive, patient, communicative, and solutions focused. They know they can count on us to not only anticipate their needs but to deliver the right answer every time.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Our School Nutrition team builds high-transaction-volume software that processes over 1 billion meal transactions annually across thousands of school districts. This is mission-critical infrastructure — it must work during the lunch rush, every school day, in cafeterias nationwide. We're building the next generation of nutrition management technology to help schools operate more efficiently while ensuring every student has access to healthy meals.
ABOUT THE POSITION
As an Engineering Manager for School Nutrition, you will lead the engineering team(s) building the platform that processes over 1 billion meal transactions annually across thousands of school districts. You'll partner closely with engineering leadership and product teams to ship mission-critical software — the kind that has to work during the lunch rush, every school day, in cafeterias nationwide.
This is a player/coach role that leans firmly toward coach. Roughly 80% of your time is spent leading people — hiring, coaching, unblocking, raising the bar, and driving delivery — and the remaining time is spent where a manager's technical leverage is highest: architecture and design reviews, high-stakes code review, pairing on hard problems, and jumping into the code when production needs you. You're not here to pick up sprint tickets, but you are close enough to the code that your engineers trust your technical instincts and you can carry real weight during an incident.
WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING
- Lead and grow a team of engineers across a blended FTE/contractor model - running meaningful 1:1s, writing growth plans, managing performance honestly, and giving direct, kind, actionable feedback
- Own delivery outcomes for the School Nutrition platform - partnering with Product to shape the work, not just receive it, and driving predictable, high-quality execution
- Partner with the Sr. Director of Engineering and your senior engineers to shape and execute the modernization roadmap - evolving the platform toward .NET Core, cloud-native services, and PostgreSQL without destabilizing daily delivery
- Raise the hiring bar and own the hiring loop for your team - sourcing, interview calibration, and closing talent
- Contribute as a technical leader in ADRs, design reviews, and high-stakes code reviews; weigh in on tradeoffs with enough depth that your technical voice genuinely sharpens the work
- Drive healthy engineering practices - testing discipline, CI/CD, DORA/flow metrics, and incident response - using evidence to guide improvement rather than opinion alone
- Enable the team to adopt AI-assisted development tooling (Claude Code) effectively and responsibly, modeling the practices yourself
- Cultivate a culture where engineers are confident to change code - when people are afraid to touch something, we move slowly and we break things
- Communicate up, across, and down clearly in writing - roadmaps, status, risks, tradeoffs, and decisions
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Core Experience
- 3+ years managing software engineering teams, with a track record of shipping production software at quality
- Experience managing mixed FTE and contractor teams - with a clear sense of where those management approaches converge and diverge
- Strong technical background with substantial .NET / C# experience; you've shipped real systems and are sharp enough to contribute credibly in design and code reviews
- Comfort across Angular and SQL Server (or close-adjacent stacks you can ramp on quickly)
- Experience leading modernization work - evolving legacy systems incrementally without stopping the world
- Evidence-based management approach - familiar with DORA, SPACE, or equivalent frameworks, and honest about their limits
AWS & Cloud Architecture
- Production experience working in AWS environments; comfortable reasoning about Lambda, RDS, and common cloud-native services
- Appreciation for the tradeoffs between legacy and cloud-native approaches, and experience guiding teams through the transition
AI-Assisted Development
- Hands-on user of Claude Code, Cursor, or similar AI-assisted coding environments
- Able to coach a team on effective, responsible use of AI tooling — and honest about where it works and where it doesn't
Additional Requirements
- Coaching-first instinct - you default to asking before telling, and help people think clearly rather than thinking for them
- Direct communicator - you can challenge respectfully, escalate clearly, and write a crisp exec update
- Fluent in Agile, DevOps, and CI/CD practices
WHAT WILL MAKE YOU STAND OUT
- Experience in school nutrition, food service, point-of-sale systems, or K-12 EdTech
- Background managing teams that support high-transaction-volume, mission-critical systems (POS, payments, or similar)
- Experience running blended onshore/offshore or FTE/contractor engineering teams at scale
- Experience splitting or merging teams as organizational scope evolves
- Hands-on experience with .NET Core, AWS Lambda, and PostgreSQL (our direction of travel)
- Experience with offline-first or intermittent-connectivity patterns
- Contributions to engineering excellence programs, management communities of practice, or internal leadership development
🌎Flex Your Workspace: Work remote from one of our eligible states across the US, or if you’re near Austin three days in office a week!
💰Planning Your Future: Our 401(k) plan comes with a 4% employer match on total earnings (not just your base salary).
💸Performance Pays Off: Whether it’s a company bonus or target sales commission, your hard work doesn’t go unnoticed.
🌴Vacation Your Way: Our flexible Open Paid Time Off Plan lets you take the time you need, when you need it.
👶Paid Parental Leave: Take the time you need to welcome your new addition – We’ve got you covered!
🎉Ten Paid Corporate Holidays: Enjoy a little extra downtime to relax and recharge with the ten paid holidays each year.
❤️Giving Back: Feel good while doing good – 16 paid volunteer hours to support the causes that matter most to you. #LINQCares
🏥Benefits That Have Your Back (And Teeth, Too!): Rock-solid medical, dental and vision coverage. Pick your vibe: a low deductible PPO and pair with an FSA or a HDHP with a sweet HSA – with contributions from LINQ. Dental perks that even cover braces for the kiddos.
💪Wellness Perks: Employer-paid Short-Term Disability, Long Term Disability, Basic Life, and AD&D insurance. Gym reimbursements and tons of extra savings on travel assistance, employee assistance, and even pet insurance options.
🎁Rewards For Referrals: Got an amazing candidate in your network? Send them our way and earn a referral bonus when they join the team!
As a federal contractor and equal employment opportunity employer, LINQ adheres to all applicable laws and regulations regarding employment practices, ensuring that all qualified individuals receive consideration for employment
based on their qualifications. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, pregnancy, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected category under applicable federal, state, and local law.
To learn more about your rights and protections under federal law, please refer to the EEOC Equal Employment Opportunity Poster at the following link: https://www.eeoc.gov/poster
If you’d like to view a copy of the company’s state or federally required affirmative action plans or policy statement, please email [email protected]. If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request a reasonable accommodation as part of the employment selection process, please contact [email protected]. This email address is reserved solely for job seekers with disabilities requesting accessibility assistance or an accommodation in the job application process. Please do not use this email to inquire about the status of your job application if you do not require accessibility assistance or an accommodation. Messages left for other purposes, such as solicitation, following up on an application or non-disability related technical issues, will not receive a response.
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