Manager, Software Development

About Rethink First

Rethink First is on a mission to inspire hope and power potential. We are a market leader in behavioral and mental health technology, serving employers, schools, government agencies, behavioral health providers, clinicians, and families worldwide.
The Opportunity

The Manager, Software Development leads one software development team, or a clearly defined front-end, back-end, or full-stack product area, responsible for delivering reliable, secure, and scalable solutions within Rethink First. The role owns direct people management, coaching, performance, delivery execution, quality, operational readiness, and practical team-level adoption of AI-DLC to improve how software is planned, built, tested, released, and supported.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on software development leader who develops engineers, removes delivery barriers, and helps the team use AI responsibly within a disciplined development lifecycle. They bring clarity when priorities evolve, move work forward with sound judgment and a strong sense of ownership, operate effectively in a fast-moving environment, and build trusted stakeholder alignment across Product, Operations, Support, Security, and customer-facing teams. Enterprise architecture strategy and governance are outside the scope of this role.
What You’ll Do
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Lead one front-end, back-end, or full-stack software development team within an assigned product area through planning, execution, delivery, release readiness, and ongoing support of product commitments.

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Manage, mentor, and develop engineers through coaching, feedback, clear expectations, performance management, and practical growth plans.

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Partner with Product Management to translate roadmap priorities into achievable team delivery plans, user stories, sequencing, capacity planning, and measurable outcomes.

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Remain technically engaged by partnering with technical leads where applicable, guiding team-level design discussions, reviewing code and technical approaches when needed, supporting proof-of-concept work, and reinforcing sound engineering practices.

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Strengthen engineering execution through pragmatic Agile practices, predictable planning, repository health, automated testing, quality gates, technical debt management, operational readiness, and production learning.

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Serve as a trusted cross-functional partner to Product, Operations, Support, Security, and customer-facing teams; resolve customer issues, strengthen feedback loops, navigate tradeoffs, and keep team priorities aligned with operational and business needs.

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Build a culture of ownership, quality, trust, collaboration, and continuous improvement; use delivery, quality, reliability, and team-health measures to guide decisions.

How We Work with AI
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Embed AI-DLC practices into day-to-day software delivery to improve productivity, quality, documentation, testing, and release confidence without replacing sound engineering judgment or human accountability.

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Establish practical team-level guardrails for AI-assisted coding, testing, review, security, privacy, and release validation, with clear accountability for human judgment and final acceptance.

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Coach the team on effective AI-assisted development practices, including context engineering, test generation, refactoring support, documentation support, and responsible use of agents or copilots.

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Measure AI-DLC effectiveness through delivery predictability, cycle time, defect trends, quality of AI-assisted output, review findings, team adoption, and business impact.

What We’re Looking For
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6+ years of software engineering or web development experience, including 2+ years leading engineers as a manager or technical lead.

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Proven success delivering SaaS, web, mobile, or cloud-based software products in a fast-moving environment with evolving priorities and multiple stakeholders.

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Strong technical foundation in modern software development, includ