We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to join our Player Experience Cluster to help us level-up the entire awareness, consideration, and purchasing experience.

About Yoto

Yoto is an screen-free interactive audio platform for kids. We make carefully connected audio players that kids control, with no microphones, cameras or ads. We have a catalogue of audio that inspires creative play and learning with 1,000+ titles in our card store from top creators, publishers and labels - think LEGO, Disney, Marvel, Roald Dahl and Sony. We also create Yoto Originals like this.

• Featured in Bloomberg’s 25 UK startups to watch in 2023.

• Second fastest growing tech company in the UK, in Deloitte Fast50 2024.

• Named one of TIME Magazine’s Top 100 Inventions of 2020.

• We’re 110+ employees spread across the UK, US and France.. and growing!

We’re on a mission to be the soundtrack of childhood, and help families on their own unique adventures. By creating products that inspire independent play, we help families discover and grow with an inspiring world of audio - and we would like you to help us achieve it!

About the Role

We are seeking an Engineering Manager (EM) for our Player Experience Cluster, a team comprising of cross-functional engineers, designers, and product managers (our version of Tribes). As an EM, you will oversee day-to-day engineering operations and support the career development of your reports within the Cluster. In our scale-up phase, we rely on EMs to continually develop and evolve their teams, identify new business needs, and ensure the timely delivery of large-scale initiatives impacting the Cluster.

The Player Experience cluster is focused on ensuring Players and Minis work seamlessly for every family around the world. With hundreds of thousands of players out there (and growing every minute) we make sure every child has the content they want to listen to available at their fingertips. We also work to improve the Player and Mini experience with innovative features like our room thermometer, nightlight, and alarms. We’re a passionate, cross-functional group of engineers, product managers, and designers, all focused on keeping a world-class experience for all the families we help.

This role demands strong leadership in a remote-first environment and a proven ability to scale high-caliber engineering teams. The ideal candidate has extensive experience establishing and maintaining effective processes in a distributed setting, alongside a strong track record of driving operational and technical excellence and delivering impactful initiatives aligned with company growth.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Lead, mentor, and manage a cross-functional engineering Cluster with trust, respect, and empathy, setting clear goals and metrics as needed.

• Establish a collaborative, high-performing engineering culture that thrives in a remote-first setting, fostering accountability, innovation, and ownership.

• Serve as the primary delivery lead for large strategic engineering initiatives, managing timelines, resources, and stakeholder communication.

• Ensure strong collaboration across teams and functions, including product, design, and operations, to deliver projects on time and within scope.

• Drive technical decisions related to the scalability, reliability, and performance of our systems, in alignment with company scale-up objectives.

• Establish and maintain high engineering standards and best practices with clear mechanisms for tracking and reporting.

• Participate actively in technical reviews, providing hands-on support when necessary.

• Lead the team in improving and maintaining critical technical and operational metrics, ensuring product stability and performance as the company scales.

• Implement robust operational processes, such as incident management and uptime monitoring, to support product scalability and growth.

• Support recruitment efforts by identifying and onboarding top talent for the organization.

• Provide leadership through development plans, performance reviews, and constructive feedback grounded in trust and respect.

What You’ll Bring:

• 8+ years of engineering experience in embedded development. 3+ years in engineering leadership or management in a distributed team environment.

• Expert knowledge of embedded software architecture design (multiple chipsets, MCU/SoC, dual/triple cpu, etc) with the ability to provide hands-on technical leadership as needed.

• Expert knowledge of Embedded-C/C++ and strong engineering best practices

• Proven experience managing large-scale technical projects, creating strategic roadmaps and manifesting them into day-to-day tasks, and driving alignment and accountability across multiple teams and stakeholders.

• Demonstrated ability to lead, mentor, and grow engineering teams in fast-scaling organizations.

• Exceptional communication skills, with experience facilitating asynchronous communication and collaboration across time zones.

• Ability to thrive in a rapidly changing, scale-up environment, proactively solving complex technical and operational challenges.

• Experience establishing and driving operational excellence best practices, including dashboards, alarms, and incident response.

What you can expect from Yoto:

• Salary: £90,000 - £100,000 based on experience. We never want to miss out on speaking to great candidates, so please don't let our banding put you off getting in touch. You never know what might be in our future plan and how well you might fit!
  
• Flexibility: Hybrid working with a choice based approach - we would love you to come into the office as much as possible, with a minimum of once or twice a month. Take advantage of our ‘work from anywhere’ policy to work from a different location for up to 6 weeks every year. Summer Hours policy to use between the months of June and August.
• Financial: Generous share option programme so you’ll be invested in Yoto’s success. Receive Income Protection, covering long term sickness for up to 2 years and company sick pay that increases with length of service. Life Assurance cover from day one of your service. Workplace Pension offering up to to 3% employer contributions, following probation. Generous employee referral bonus scheme.
• Health & Wellness: Private Medical Insurance via Aviva, or a Wellbeing Allowance to be used for memberships, subscriptions, treatment or therapy. Access to 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) through WeCare and unlimited access to Dental advice and guidance via Toothfairy. Bike to work scheme to promote healthier lifestyles.
• Time Off: 25 days of holiday per year, plus bank holidays. On top of this, you also receive your birthday off, plus 1 extra day of holiday for every year worked after you hit your 2 year anniversary, up to 5 extra days. After 4 years of service, you are also eligible for our sabbatical policy offering up to 3 months' of unpaid sabbatical.
• Helping Families: Variety of family-friendly leave, including enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption, fertility, pregnancy loss and carers leave. Unlock savings with our workplace nursery scheme, designed to support parents of preschool-aged children.
• People & Planet: Up to 2 volunteer days a year. A Book Allowance of up to £50 a year to contribute to your professional development.
• Fun Perks: You receive your very own Yoto player and starter pack of cards! Regular company socials and celebrations, including our annual YotoFest!

NB: This is a full-time role and you must be eligible to work in the UK as we are unable to offer visa sponsorship. No recruiters please!

Equity and Diversity:

At Yoto, our mission is to be the soundtrack of childhood, and help families on their own unique adventures. Our success is rooted in unwavering commitment to our core principles—Kids in Control, Helping Families, Building with Empathy, Embrace Difference, and Playfully Inquisitive.

At Yoto, flexible working and autonomy are key to us. We support working parents because we know that life and work must work together. And just as we share audio content from a diverse community of creators, we also strive to build a diverse and inclusive team. Our passionate DE&I group raises new voices, beliefs, and perspectives to help everyone at Yoto feel heard. Check out our website for more info on our approach to People and Planet.