Here are some questions I feel are useful to get answers to when considering a Dev Manager role
As an organisation, what is the goal for the next 6 months? What is the goals for the next 12 months?
What are your plans for growth in the next year? What are your plans for growth in the next 2 years? What are your measures for success? What is your pricing model? Who are your biggest competitors? Who do you keep your eye on the most? How many users do you have? What is retention like?
How many people will fall in engineering teams How do you measure what the engineering team costs? How do you measure what the engineering team brings in? How is your engineering team currently structured? Why have you structured it this way? Is there anyone in engineering that needs or is getting near to needing to be fired? How do you incentivize engineering? What are the typical hours of your software engineers What is the tech stack? Version control, CI pipeline, monitoring, infrastructure?
Testers have a different line manager, would you consider moving the testers to have the same line manager as your developers? What do you pay a senior engineer in the org? What do you pay a junior engineer in the org? How much do you spend on training per developer each year Is training budgeted per head or as a group?
Will I have control of budget? Will I have automony to re-jig teams, move members between teams? Do you have remote workers? Am I expected to be onsite every day?
How do you measure performance of a developer? How do you measure performance of a team lead?
What do you believe are the biggest challenges the engineering team faces in the next 3, 6 & 12 months? What do you believe the biggest challenges I would be facing in the next 3, 6 & 12 months?