Engineering Manager - Next.js

🏢 About Vercel

Vercel is the agentic infrastructure company that enables developers and AI agents to ship software quickly and securely. Trusted by OpenAI, PayPal, Ramp, and millions of developers, Vercel provides tools for both human and AI-driven development, focusing on speed, security, and exceptional developer experience.

🎯 The Role

We are looking for an Engineering Team Lead to help build and lead a team working on Next.js. This is a hands-on player/coach role for an experienced engineer who wants to remain close to the code while helping a small team do its best work. You will be an engineer first and a manager second, contributing directly to the framework, leading major technical initiatives, reviewing code, debugging complex production issues, and helping make architectural decisions.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• React
• Next.js
• TypeScript
• JavaScript
• Open source infrastructure (rendering, caching, routing, build systems)

💼 What You'll Do

• Build and ship Next.js: write production code, review pull requests, debug difficult issues, and contribute directly to the framework
• Lead major technical initiatives from exploration through architecture, implementation, rollout, and production follow-through
• Set technical direction across rendering, caching, routing, build systems, runtime behavior, and developer tooling
• Investigate performance regressions and production failures; turn learnings into practical improvements
• Establish strong patterns for code quality, testing, performance, reliability, observability, and incremental delivery
• Coach engineers through pairing, design reviews, code reviews, and shared ownership of challenging problems
• Provide focused people leadership: set expectations, give candid feedback, support career development, and maintain a high-trust accountable team
• Partner across Vercel with Product, Design, Infrastructure, and other engineering teams
• Champion open source: work in public, engage with contributors, balance community needs with product priorities
• Help grow the team through recruiting and onboarding new engineers

✅ What You'll Need

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with strong hands-on capabilities
• Experience leading engineers or small technical teams
• Recent track record of writing, reviewing, and shipping production code
• Strong technical judgment in React, framework architecture, or large-scale open source project systems
• Ability to take complex problems, form a clear viewpoint, write critical code, and bring others along
• Experience building products or infrastructure for developers
• Systems thinking: ability to guide toward clean abstractions and scalable technical decisions
• Comfortable with ambiguity and solving from first principles
• Balance of speed and quality
• Excellent written communication and facilitation of productive technical debate
• Use AI tools in own workflow with informed opinions about agentic products

🌟 Nice to Have

• Experience maintaining or contributing to a major open source project, particularly in the React or Next.js ecosystem
• Experience with compilers, bundlers, caching, rendering systems, or distributed infrastructure
• Experience leading a small, senior engineering team while making substantial individual contributions
• Experience forming a team or technical direction from zero to one
• Familiarity with the Next.js codebase