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Outside Interactive

Active lifestyle media network with subscriptions

Engineering Manager - Foundational Services

Full-Time
$150k - $180k/yr+ Bonus + Commission
Mid
Remote in USA+1 moreMore locations: Remote in Canada
Remote
Engineering ManagementEngineering Leadership

About the job

Requirements
  • Sound skills in architecture, feature development, and code review.
  • Ability to drive product and architecture decisions with product and design counterparts.
  • Ability to work closely with engineering leaders to set technical strategy and direction.
  • Ability to engage deeply with architecture and technical decisions, identify tradeoffs, and provide meaningful direction.
  • Ability to facilitate planning exercises that surface unknowns and produce reliable estimates while accounting for technical debt and competing priorities.
  • Ability to establish and model modern engineering practices including continuous integration and continuous delivery, distributed tracing, DORA metrics, observability dashboards, and large language model-assisted development.
Responsibilities
  • Manage two groups of engineers responsible for building shared services used across all products.
  • Put customer and business goals first while driving product and architecture decisions with product and design counterparts.
  • Help the team reach its maximum potential and remain accountable for the health and execution of the services and the team that builds them.
  • Build and maintain a collaborative team culture based on community, transparency, good intent, and expertise.
  • Foster an environment where engineers understand the business impact of their work.
  • Maintain high standards by fixing broken systems, cleaning up messy processes, and holding the team to the same standard.
  • Manage conflict constructively and resolve disagreements with a bias toward action.
  • Work with the Product Manager to drive the roadmap while maintaining scope and technical boundaries.
  • Run regular one-on-ones and goal-setting conversations to align engineers with expectations and support their growth.
  • Seek challenging, impactful work for each engineer based on skills and career goals while allowing room to fail and learn.
  • Facilitate feedback conversations early and often.
  • Participate in hiring to identify candidates who strengthen the team’s culture and technical capability.
  • Build relationships with partner teams so Identity and Subscription becomes a default foundation for Outside products.
  • Triage inbound requests from customer service and cross-team stakeholders, distinguishing bugs, one-off fixes, and misunderstandings of platform capabilities.
  • Communicate clearly with engineers, product managers, and senior leadership, adjusting depth and framing for each audience.
  • Engage with architecture and technical decisions to ask questions, identify tradeoffs, and provide direction.
  • Ensure technical decisions are documented with clear tradeoffs.
  • Facilitate planning exercises that surface unknowns and produce reliable estimates.
  • Author and mentor engineers on technical planning documents.
  • Establish and model continuous integration and continuous delivery, distributed tracing, DORA metrics, observability dashboards, and large language model-assisted development.
  • Prototype or conduct technical spikes when needed to communicate tradeoffs or unblock experimentation.

About the company

Outside focuses on active-lifestyle media for outdoor enthusiasts, curating content from 20+ brands across health, fitness, gear, travel, and more. Its flagship Outside+ subscription grants unlimited access to network content and Outside Watch on-demand features. It earns revenue from memberships and partner sponsorships/advertising with industry organizations. The company differentiates itself by cultivating engaged outdoor communities and guiding people along their journeys with reliable information and accessible experiences, aiming to inspire more outdoor activity.

Company Size

501-1,000

Company Stage

Debt Financing

Total Funding

$214M

Headquarters

Boulder, Colorado

Founded

2021

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Vector Velocity provided Outside a $50 million credit facility in August 2026.
  • Marriott Bonvoy launched Outside+ Adventure Pass benefits in May 2026, expanding paid-member value.
  • Outside Days 2026 expanded into a two-day conference with Capital One and REI support.

What critics are saying

  • Outside carries fresh secured debt from Vector Velocity, pressuring cash if growth stalls.
  • Employment litigation in Bolin continues through 2026, adding legal cost and management distraction.
  • Layoffs hit Outside magazine in February 2025, signaling ongoing margin pressure and brand shrinkage.

What makes Outside Interactive unique

  • Outside+ bundles 25 brands, maps, events, and services into one membership.
  • Outside combines media, GPS, travel booking, and event registration under one platform.
  • Its audience scale spans 100 million registered users and 300 million annual consumers.

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Benefits

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

401(k) Retirement Plan

Flexible Work Hours

Paid Sick Leave

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

-1%

2 year growth

0%
Business Wire
Oct 13th, 2026
Pocket Outdoor Media Acquires Three Divisions from Active Interest Media and Completes Its Series A Financing

Pocket Outdoor Media (POM), the leading endurance sports media platform, today announced the acquisition of the Healthy Living, Fitness, and Outdoor division...

Business Wire
Aug 3rd, 2026
Vector Velocity Provides $50 Million Credit Facility to Outside Interactive

Vector Velocity ("Vector"), the direct credit investment strategy of Vector Capital Management, L.P., has completed a $50 million senior secured credit inves...

Yahoo Finance
Feb 5th, 2026
Outside Interactive posts first profit with $125M revenue, shifts from ads to subscriptions

Outside Interactive, formerly Outside Media, reported its first profit in 2024 after five years of transformation under CEO Robin Thurston. The company generated $125 million in revenue, up 23% year-over-year. Since Thurston raised $150 million in February 2021, Outside has fundamentally restructured its business model. Digital subscriptions and recurring services now account for 60% of revenue, whilst digital advertising has shrunk to 40%, reversing the 70% advertising dependence of 2021. The company has acquired numerous businesses beyond traditional publishing, including fitness apps like MapMyFitness, mapping services like Trailforks, booking platform Inntopia, and photography platform FinisherPix. Thurston emphasises Outside Interactive is no longer a media company, having reoriented around these digital services whilst maintaining legacy outdoor titles including Ski, Backpacker and Yoga Journal.

PR Newswire
Dec 10th, 2024
Headliners Khruangbin And Lord Huron To Perform At The Second Annual Outside Festival Presented By Capital One And Rei Co-Op, May 31 - June 1, 2025

Early Bird Festival Tickets and VIP Packages on Sale This Wednesday, December 11DENVER, Dec. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the overwhelming success of last year's event, the Outside Festival with presenting sponsors Capital One and REI Co-op will return to downtown Denver's Civic Center Park, May 31-June 1, 2025. Bigger and better, this year's event will feature a top shelf music lineup, films, speakers, outdoor sports, and much more. Tickets officially go on sale starting this Wednesday, Dec. 11 at 10 a.m. Mountain Standard Time

Adweek
Sep 3rd, 2024
Outside Interactive Acquires MapMyFitness

The company, now with 100 million registered users, is building a social network for outdoor enthusiasts.