The transition from a senior software engineer to an Engineering Manager is one of the most abrupt gear shifts in the tech industry. You spend years honing your technical skills—optimizing databases, architecting microservices, and mastering design patterns. Then, suddenly, your primary responsibility is no longer writing code; it’s optimizing the people and the processes that produce the code.

This transition becomes exponentially more complex when leading distributed, remote, or hybrid teams.

Having managed engineering squads at highly dynamic companies, I’ve learned that you cannot simply copy and paste in-office management techniques into a remote environment. You have to be deliberate and intentional about how your team communicates, collaborates, and creates value.

Here are the pragmatic strategies I use to build and sustain high-performing remote engineering teams.

1. Asynchronous Communication is a First-Class Citizen

In an office, turning your chair around to ask a quick question is cheap. In a remote setting, every message, ping, and video call carries a heavier cognitive load and interrupts “deep work” (the uninterrupted focus time developers need to solve hard problems).

The rule is simple: Default to Async.

  • The Problem: “Hey, got 5 minutes to jump on a call?” This breaks a developer’s flow state for a question that could often be answered via text.
  • The Solution: We favor well-structured written communication. When presenting a problem in Slack or Microsoft Teams, I encourage engineers to structure it clearly:
    • Context (What I’m trying to do)
    • Issue (What’s failing, including logs/error traces)
    • Attempted Solutions (What I’ve already tried)

This async-first culture forces clarity of thought. It creates a searchable knowledge base and, crucially, respects the maker’s schedule. Synchronous video calls are reserved for high-bandwidth activities: complex architecture whiteboarding, complex 1-on-1s, and urgent production incidents.

2. The 1-on-1: Your Most Important Tool

If you cancel or continually reschedule your 1-on-1s, you are sending a clear message to your developers: You are my lowest priority.

In a remote team, this is the only dedicated, synchronous time you have to understand the human behind the pull request.

My 1-on-1 Framework:

  • Their Time, Not Mine: It is their agenda. If they want to rant about a legacy codebase, ask for career advice, or talk about a new hobby, that’s what we talk about.
  • Career Growth Mapping: Every quarter, we dedicate a full session exclusively to career growth. Are they a mid-level engineer looking to become a senior? What specific technical gaps do they need to fill? We map out the opportunities inside our current project to stretch those skills.
  • The “Unblock” Check: “What is the single most frustrating part of your workflow right now?” (Is the CI pipeline taking 40 minutes? Do they lack permissions to a specific AWS resource?) As a manager, my job is to be the snowplow, clearing obstacles out of their way.

3. Metrics That Matter (and Avoiding the Trap of “Activity”)

How do you measure a remote developer’s performance when you can’t see them at their desk?

If your answer relies on “lines of code written” or “number of Jira tickets closed,” you are measuring activity, not impact. These metrics are easily gamed and actively encourage poor engineering behavior (e.g., writing bloated code or splitting trivial tasks into multiple tickets).

Instead, focus on DORA metrics and business outcomes:

  1. Lead Time for Changes: How long does it take an idea to get from code commit to production? This measures process efficiency.
  2. Deployment Frequency: How often does the team deliver value to the business? This encourages small, safe releases.
  3. Change Failure Rate & MTTR: When things break, how quickly does the team recover? This measures systemic resilience.

Most importantly, tie engineering goals to business OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). An engineer shouldn’t just know they are building a “cache invalidation service”; they should understand it’s part of an OKR to improve checkout latency by 200ms, which drives a projected 2% increase in sales conversions.

4. Engineering Culture is Defined by Architecture

Conway’s Law states that “organizations design systems that mirror their own communication structures.”

In remote teams, monolithic codebases often lead to frustration. If 50 engineers are pushing code to a single giant repository, the pull request review loops, merge conflicts, and release coordination meetings become an administrative nightmare. The communication overhead paralyzes the team.

Decoupled Architecture = Empowered Teams.

Transitioning to a well-architected microservices (or modular monolith) approach isn’t just a technical decision; it’s a profound management strategy. It allows small squads (4-6 engineers) to own an entire domain entirely independently. They can make architectural choices, deploy on their own schedule, and iterate rapidly without begging for permission from a centralized architecture board.

Conclusion

Managing remote engineering teams is not about surveillance or micromanagement. It is about establishing radical clarity: clear objectives, clear boundaries for deep work, clear async communication protocols, and a clear path for career growth.

When you trust your engineers, protect their focus time, and align their technical work with meaningful business impact, high performance naturally follows—regardless of the time zones they work in.

What management approaches have resonated most with your engineering teams? What struggles have you encountered leading a remote squad? Let me know your thoughts on LinkedIn.