Engineering Manager Lisboa

Engineering Manager
Lisboa
Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

Engineering Manager

Location: Portugal – Lisboa, Coimbra, Porto, or Aveiro | Brazil – São Paulo

Ready to expand beyond traditional engineering management?

At Critical Links, we're changing the world by enabling the global workforce of tomorrow. As we grow, we’re looking for an Engineering Manager who wants to broaden their impact through
- on experience across product strategy architecture, engineering delivery, and product operations as they lead the way in delivering AI-enabled education platforms that work everywhere in the world – even in the most challenging environments of developing nations that may struggle with power, connectivity, and infrastructure. We’re enabling the youth of today in these developing nations to be part of the workforce of tomorrow by putting an AI-enabled digital learning experience at their fingertips regardless of these challenges.

This role offers broader scope than typical engineering delivery - perfect for someone ready to begin to influence technology directions beyond just coding and team leadership.

The Leadership Scope You'll Grow Into:

• Lead frontend and backend teams while learning to shape product roadmaps
• Make
  -
  - buy decisions that define product capabilities
• Design deployment strategies and disaster recovery plans for
  - critical systems
• Drive infrastructure decisions ensuring 99. 9% uptime across distributed deployments
• Bridge technical and business teams, translating between Sales promises and Engineering realities
• Partner with our Senior Architect on R&D initiatives that become product features

Why This Role Accelerates Your Career:

Most Engineering Managers stay confined to specific team leadership with the goal of defined product delivery. Here, you'll work directly with our executive team and develop the complete skill set valued in senior technology leadership:

• Product Strategy Experience: Shape what we build, not just how we build it
• Infrastructure Architecture: Design systems that scale from data centers to
  - powered schools
• P&L Awareness: Your decisions directly impact revenue and costs, and you’ll learn how to assess and implement strategies to maximize impact and value
• Executive Communication Skills: Develop ability to translate technical concepts for business stakeholders

You'll master these skills while working on two unique platforms:

• C3 Micro-Cloud: Offline-first platform for
  - limited schools
• C3 Cloud Control: Cloud platform for global control of distributed systems requiring extreme optimization and
  -
  - use

What Makes You Ready for This Growth:

• 5+ years in Engineering Management with 8+ years in software development
• Fluent in Portuguese and English (written and spoken) - essential for our global operations
• Ability to inspire a team and lead by example
• Hungry to expand beyond pure people management into product and infrastructure
• Track record of making pragmatic technical decisions that result in solid product delivery
• Comfortable with bringing clarity to ambiguity, responding to the unexpected, and wearing multiple hats to get things done
• View constraints as puzzles to solve, not obstacles
• Ready to own outcomes, not just deliverables

What We Offer:

• Exposure to product strategy and infrastructure architecture beyond typical engineering management
• Mentorship from experienced technology leaders
• Real autonomy - your decisions shape product and company direction
• Impact millions of students in underserved communities
• Lead
  - edge implementations including
  - device AI
• Build and grow a
  - class engineering team

The Bottom Line:

If you're an Engineering Manager who's ready to stop watching from the sidelines while product and infrastructure decisions get made, this is your opportunity. You'll gain
- on experience across multiple technology domains that many Engineering Managers never get to touch.

Whether you've already worked across these domains or you're excited to expand into them, what matters most is your ability to navigate complex technical challenges in
- constrained environments.

Ready to expand beyond traditional engineering management? Let's talk.