Ever wondered what a day in the life of an Engineering Manager looks like? Or whether the role leans more towards technical or managerial responsibilities?”

Well, A Day in the Life as an Engineering Manager involves combining the role of technical leadership with people management, overseeing projects, and strategic planning Unlike engineers, whose typical day looks like performing different technical roles and tasks, engineering managers are just above that holding both technical as well as managerial roles including soft skills like clear communication and people management.

They start their day by managing the team while addressing engineering team concerns, coordinating & overseeing multiple projects by removing in-between hurdles, providing technical guidance on architecture and design decisions, communicating with other upper departments & management, allocating resources wisely, evaluating team members and aligning team goals with the company goals by performing strategic planning at their day end.

As well said by ‘Peter. F. Drucker’, “If you want something new, you have to stop something old”, is well-fitted for engineering managers due to their ability, consistency, and creative thinking to recreate something new with their strategic planning, contributing to the organization’s success.

What Does an Engineering Manager Do?

The engineering manager plays an important role in bridging and managing technical activities along with leadership and business perception.

An engineering manager oversees teams like software development, engineering, and other technical teams, guiding and assisting them in their day-to-day work within the organization. Viewing the technical aspect, they are quite responsible for setting technical directions, and making technical decisions like architecture, designing, while ensuring project completion meeting quality and standards.

While viewing managerial aspect, they are responsible for planning, creating timelines, developing strategies, managing budgets, coordinating projects, supervising team members, ensuring successful project execution, and communicating with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

They also facilitates managing team dynamics, conflicts, and fosters a effective work environment, additionally contributing to improvement initiatives. Ultimately, an engineering manager role is to drive and deliver successful projects and innovation along with balancing technical leadership by planning, designing, overseeing and managing people and resources.

Roles and Responsibilities of a Engineering Manager

• Team leadership- The Engineering Manager is responsible for directing, delegating tasks, managing and motivating team of engineers to set and achieve clear organizational goals, to make sure in fostering productive and collaborative work environment.

• Project Management- Involves overseeing timely delivery of various multiple projects by managing and allocating resources and prioritizing important tasks, making sure that project’s products meet specific quality standards.

• Technical guidance- Along with managerial aspect, engineering managers are too responsible for providing technical guidance and directions to its team. They may participate in architectural and system design decisions, providing technical solutions, aligning with proper review and best practices.

• Talent Management- Engineering Managers often performs duties like hiring new team members, maintaining a strong team and performing performance evaluations to narrow down the skill gap and develop career growth for team members. Additionally, they are also responsible for communicating project status and technical concepts, including their team’s opinions to upper management and stakeholders.

• Strategic planning & Process improvement- Engineering managers identifies and contributes to organization’s long term strategy, aligning team’s goals with organization. They often identifies innovation areas and make suggestions about future trends and technologies while implementing continuous improvements and development methods to increase efficiency.

• Budget and Risk management- Managing finance and budget is crucial part of an organization. Forecasting budget needs and managing & allocating financial resources, expenses and making decisions accordingly are some of the major roles performed by an Engineering manager. Along with this, they quite handles certain risks like technical and managerial risks, maintaining industry regulations.

By following these roles and responsibilities, Engineering managers foster continuous learning and growth by adapting challenges, new technologies and knowledge sharing within their team.

Working Hours of an Engineering Manager

The typical working hours of a Engineering Manager may vary depending upon company, industry and specific project demands. It may includes-

• Standard working hours- Mostly, engineering managers typically works for 40-50 hours per week, including 8-10 hours per day, during standard office hours, Monday to Friday.

• Flexibility & Remote work opportunities- Despite of standard working hours, many tech companies do provide flexible working hours and work from home opportunities to allow managers adjust their schedules to well manage their time more efficiently.

• Extended hours- During critical phases or urgent issues, engineering managers may need to work longer, that may include evenings or weekend work too.

• Time zone considerations- For global companies and their operations, managers need to adjust their schedule accordingly to reconcile different time zones for meetings and collaboration.

• Work life and personal life balance- Managing professional life along with personal life responsibilities can be demanding and so establishing boundaries between these two is necessary to maintain overall well being of Engineering managers. Thus, maintaining healthy work life balance is necessary.

Thus, typical working hours of an engineering manager may consists of standard office working hours, remote work hours and flexibility opportunities and a healthy work life balance accomplishing both individual and organization’s goals.

A Day in the Life of an Engineering Manager

Everyday, Engineering Managers works their own way that suits them best and are flexible and adaptable to their routines as per their work requirements. The breakdown of how Engineering Managers typically structure their workday is as follows:

1. Morning Routine

• Reviewing and responding mails- The first task in the morning of a Engineering Manager typically covers reviewing and responding to the urgent mails requiring immediate action.
• Prioritizing urgent matters- It involves giving attention to the urgent matters first, happens overnight and planning & prioritizing tasks further accordingly. E.g.- Scheduling urgent client meetings, important project updates
• Preparation for daily meeting- Preparing of daily meeting usually of 15-20 minutes is one of the crucial aspect for a engineering manager to gather previous day project status update from each team member to plan accordingly further.

2. Mid- Morning

• One- on-One meetings- This time is crucial for Engineering Managers to do conduct one-on-one meetings personally with team members to oversee members performance, present status, challenges or any personal issues and build strong relations with team members.
• Reviewing codes and stakeholders meetings- This time manager also reviews code & technical discussions, providing valuable insights and suggestions. Also, stakeholder’s meeting with manager too occurs this time regarding project updates and other organization’s goals.

3. Early Afternoon

• Strategic Work- At early afternoon, more of a strategic work is done involving panning for upcoming projects and it’s in-depth discussions or deliberating sessions for introducing new features or products, providing both technical and business insights.
• Cross functional meetings- Cross functional team meetings are held, including collaboration with product, design or marketing teams to ensure smooth functioning of the project.

4. Late Afternoon

• Solve technical issues- At the late afternoon time, manager often tries to address any issues from team, that maybe is to resolve technical glitches, assisting in critical or complex tasks.
• Prepare status reports- At the end of this period, they might prepare status reports for upper management, highlighting progress, risks & next steps.

5. Evening( At day end)

• Wrap up- At the day end, the manager usually wrap up the remaining tasks & plans for the next day. This may involves updating task lists, responding remaining emails & jotting ideas for upcoming projects.
• Check in progress- Sometimes expect this managers also use this time to check in with team members to ensure if work is progressing smoothly.
• Overall, a engineering manager’s day is often busy & divided, involving mix of communication, problem solving, strategic thinking, technical improvement or networking within industry, making it both challenging as well as rewarding role.

Tech lead vs Engineering manager – Key differences