Engineering Manager - Experience Above the Box (all genders)

About the role

About tonies:tonies is the globally leading interactive audio platform for children with more than 10 million Tonieboxes and 125 million Tonies sold. The intuitive and award-winning audio system has changed the way young children play and learn independently with its child-safe, wireless, and screen-free approach. Tonieboxes have been activated in over 100 countries, the content portfolio includes around 1,400 Tonies in several languages. Since its inception, tonies has achieved significant milestones, including listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in November 2021 as well as a globally present team of over 550 dedicated professionals operating from various countries. Joining our tonies team means being part of an inspiring mission to create innovative and meaningful experiences for children around the world. Together, we’re shaping the future of play, learning, and imagination. You as part of tonies:Above the box is where the magic of tonies becomes tangible: the Tonies themselves — Content, Creative, Clever — and Tonieplay. As Engineering Manager (all genders) for our Above-the-Box value stream, you lead a cross-functional team that owns these experiences end to end — from the device through App and cloud, across every Toniebox generation and every device our products will run on next. The team is newly formed and set to grow, with a mix of internal and external engineers. Together with your Product Manager, you shape both the experiences we ship and the team that builds them, bringing joy to millions of children worldwide. Ready to help us create the future of audio play? Your tasks and responsibilities will include:Team Leadership: You nurture the professional growth of your engineers and build a culture where inclusive mentorship, continuous learning, and high collaboration are the norm — across disciplines, and across internal and external team members alike. Building & Scaling the Team: You grow the team as our roadmap grows: shaping the profiles we hire, onboarding and integrating external engineers, and making sure critical knowledge stays with the team rather than walking out the door. End-to-End Ownership: You make your team genuinely accountable for its experiences — embedded, app, and cloud — rather than handing work over at team boundaries. Architectural Oversight: You oversee the structural integrity of the Above-the-Box implementations, ensuring a consistent user experience across multiple device generations through clean abstractions and cross-functional end-to-end ownership. Interfaces & Dependencies: You define the application-level APIs your team needs from our platform teams and turn cross-team dependencies into clear, testable contracts instead of coordination overhead. Product Sync & Strategy: You synchronise with Product Management to prioritise features and technical debt, ensuring that every engineering cycle directly fuels the overarching tonies® product vision. Leading Through Change: You bring the team through transitions with a clear vision, identifying what needs to improve and driving those improvements together with your engineers. Technical Credibility & Hands-on Depth: You stay close enough to the code to run high-impact reviews, challenge architectural decisions, and step in on critical problems — so our quality standards remain uncompromised, including for work delivered by external partners. Delivery Excellence: You manage the end-to-end delivery process, applying lean principles to streamline workflows and ensure stable, plannable, reliable releases for our customers. Your Team's ResponsibilitiesDesigning, building, and maintaining the Above-the-Box experience — our value stream covering everything our users experience beyond the box itself: Content-, Creative- and Clever Tonies Tonieplay Delivering these experiences across the full stack, from on-device software through app and cloud services Specifying the abstract interfaces (APIs) delivered by our lower-level platform teams,