Engineering Manager

About Ovative Group:

Ovative Group is an independent, full-funnel media, measurement, and creative firm transforming how brands grow. We partner with leading names like American Eagle, Best Buy, Domino’s, The Home Depot, Polaris, and UnitedHealth Group to build smarter media and measurement programs that drive real, profitable growth. 

We don’t just track performance—we redefine it. Powered by our proprietary intelligence platform, EMRge, and our holistic metric Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR), we help brands connect revenue, customer, and brand outcomes into one clear picture of success. Our approach to full-funnel strategy, buying, and measurement delivers results that matter—and it’s getting noticed. Our work has been recognized by Digiday, Google, USA Today, Inc. 5000, and Search Engine Land.

About the Role:

Data Products owns the data and infrastructure that lets everyone at Ovative, and our clients, access data and reporting they need. The team builds on a modern stack, including Dagster, Databricks, and dbt, and is responsible for how data moves through the organization, from ingest, data modeling, and permissions that govern who can access it. 

We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead this team. You'll set the delivery rhythm, grow engineers across multiple disciplines, and represent Data Products to a broad set of partners who depend on the team for data access and governance. You'll partner closely with our Engineering Leads and Product Mangers to deliver business critical data and features for the organization. The right candidate earns real credibility with senior engineers through good judgment and consistent delivery. 

Responsibilities of an Engineering Manager:

Delivery & Planning 

• Own the delivery plan for each sprint together with the Product Owner and our Engineering Leads, and make sure sprint backlogs are made up of clear, well-scoped stories the team can confidently deliver. 

• Keep the team's delivery rhythm steady, and when scope needs to shift, work that through deliberately as part of planning. 

People Leadership 

• Hold regular 1:1s and give feedback that's specific enough to act on, across the team's disciplines, including data engineering, full stack, and QA. 

• Set clear expectations for ownership and quality, and address issues as they come up. 

• Build plans together with the team, and hold each other accountable for getting deliverables out the door. 

• Create stretch opportunities that help people grow in ownership and versatility as the team matures, and recognize people for how they work as well as what they ship. 

Engineering Quality & Practices 

• Keep code reviews timely and focused on maintainability, stability, and security. 

• Make sure code, especially AI-generated code, is fully understood and owned by whoever submits it. 

• Build and manage team health reporting to ensure operations are strong and the team has what it needs to succeed. 

Cross-Team & Stakeholder Management 

• Manage relationships across a wide set of partners including operations teams, client delivery teams, and executive stakeholders that are critical inputs into our work. 

• Partner with Product Owner to dial in requirements and priorities across business facing needs, engineering excellence, and overall efficiency. 

• Advocate for the team's needs, keep expectations with stakeholders realistic, and communicate early enough that nothing comes as a surprise. 

Culture & AI Adoption 

• Foster psychological safety by modeling openness and treating mistakes as learning opportunities. Run honest retros and bring the team into hard decisions together. 

• Champion responsible use of AI-assisted development tools, and help the team find patterns that speed up delivery while protecting quality and security. 

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in software or data engineering, or a related technical discipline, including direct management experience leading engineers (including senior or lead engineers). 

• Working familiarity with modern data platform and orchestration tooling (e.g., Dagster, Airflow, or similar), cloud data warehousing (e.g., Databricks, BigQuery, Snowflake), and transformation frameworks (e.g., dbt), enough to manage and prioritize the work confidently. 

• Strong technical literacy and comfort with data pipeline concepts. 

• Demonstrated experience managing relationships across multiple stakeholder groups, including client-delivery-adjacent work such as access and governance requests. 

• Experience with Agile methodologies in a sprint-based product delivery model. 

• Strong written and verbal communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences. 

Preferred:

• Experience managing data governance or access-control processes (e.g., access controls, SOC2 compliance, CVE remediation). 

• Experience with, or a strong demonstrable interest in, agentic AI technologies and setting practical guardrails for AI-assisted or AI-generated code. 

• Experience with marketing APIs, ad-tech data, or automating data pulls from marketing platforms.  Bonus points for data modeling experience. 

• Experience partnering directly with client-facing or client-delivery teams on data requests. 

• Experience influencing budget and investment decisions for engineering organizations including capital requests and ROI analysis. 

Pay Transparency: 

At Ovative, we offer a transparent view into three core components of the total compensation package: Base Salary, Annual Bonus, and Benefits. 

For our Manager positions, including the position of Engineering Manager, our compensation range is from $90,000 to $132,000 on an annualized basis, which is inclusive of an annual bonus opportunity of up to 20% of base salary.

Working at Ovative Group:

We provide strong, competitive, holistic benefits that understand the importance of your life inside and out of work. 

At Ovative, culture isn’t a buzzword—it’s the reason we’ve been named a Top Workplace for ten years running. We lead with trust, transparency, and a commitment to doing the hard work others avoid.

We offer flexibility. You'll work from our Minneapolis, Chicago, or New York office on set days each week, and an option to work remote on others.

Our open floor plan reflects our open communication and flat structure—where interns collaborate with VPs, analysts partner with senior leaders, and our CEO engages with every team member. Together, we create an environment where smart, driven people can do their best work and support one another in the process. 

We’re equally committed to inclusion and belonging. Ovative fosters a workplace where everyone can participate and thrive—regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression or other protected class status. Our benefits and policies reflect that commitment, from inclusive medical leave coverage for same-sex spouses to equitable care and support for all families. 

Benefits: 

We strive to hire and retain the best talent by offering fair, competitive compensation, a meaningful bonus program, and excellent health coverage. When the company performs well, we all benefit. 

Some tangible benefits and amenities we enjoy:

• Access to all office spaces in MSP, NYC, and CHI  

• Frequent, paid travel to our Minneapolis headquarters for company events, team events, and in-person collaboration with teams

• Generous paid vacation policy  

• 401k match program  

• Top-notch health insurance options, inclusive of same sex partners 

• Family formation benefits including reimbursement options for fertility, pregnancy, and parenting needs 

• Monthly stipend for your mobile phone and data plan  

• Sabbatical program  

• Charitable giving via our time and a financial match program  

• Shenanigan’s Day  

Additional information can be found at Ovative's Career Page.

The details of the benefits are covered by applicable plan documents for group benefits and by company policies where a plan document does not apply.

Working at Ovative won’t be easy—but if you like challenging, hard work, driving results, and being surrounded by the best talent, it has the potential to be the most rewarding job you’ll ever have. If you think you can make us better, we want to hear from you! 

EEO & Accessibility: 

Ovative is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to a respectful, inclusive workplace for all. Applicants receive consideration without regard to legally protected characteristics (e.g., color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions, sexual orientation, gender identity/, gender expression, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, marital/ status, familial status, military or veteran’s status, genetic information, status with regard to public assistance, and any other status protected under applicable law). 

We provide reasonable accommodations consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act and applicable state law to qualified applicants and employees with disability, unless doing so would create an undue hardship.

If you need assistance or accommodation at any stage of the application or interview process due to a disability, please contact us at application.accomodations@ovative.com. 

Application Details and Process:

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States for any employer on a full-time basis, without current or future need for visa sponsorship. Ovative is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa for this position. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification documentation upon hire.

Open Until Filled or Otherwise Withdrawn:

We encourage interested candidates to apply early. The position will remain open for at least 10 business days from the first day of posting. After this time, if the position has not been filled, the posting will remain open until the position is filled, or until the posting is otherwise closed or withdrawn for business reasons.