Founding Engineering Manager

About the role

This is a hands-on role for a Founding Engineering Manager at a Series A AI infrastructure company. You'll work closely with the founders and a founding engineering team that includes individuals from Google, Meta, Cruise, and AWS. The team is known for writing their own feature docs, owning customer support rotations, and valuing craftsmanship.

Responsibilities

• Mentor and develop a high retention team of engineers.
• Build the conditions where strong people do their best work and stay.
• Partner with founders on hiring, onboarding, and career development as the engineering org grows beyond its founding core.
• Own planning and delivery across multiple initiatives.
• Hold the bar on quality and system design without slowing the team down.
• Connect engineering to product and customer needs.
• Make sure the team is building the right things, not just building things well.
• Build operating rhythms that actually help — lightweight and practical for a team that doesn't need heavy process to produce.
• Contribute to architectural decisions and long-term platform investments that support scale without accumulating debt.
• Stay close to customer facing engineers and understand the real world problems the platform is solving.

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years managing engineering teams in a startup or high-growth environment.
• A track record of shipping complex technical work and developing the engineers around you.
• Strong technical judgment — you can go deep on architecture and system design when it matters.
• Experience building engineering culture, not just org charts — ownership, accountability, and craft over process.
• Excellent written communication; comfortable in an async-first environment where decisions are documented and context travels in writing.
• A customer-centric instinct and genuine interest in how the platform performs in production.

Qualifications

• Experience with AI-native products, developer tools, infrastructure platforms, or agent-based systems is a strong plus.
• Nice to have: Background in developer tooling, APIs, or cloud infrastructure.
• Experience in customer-facing engineering organizations.
• Early engineering leadership at a startup (first or second management hire).

Skills

• Strong technical skills and problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing.
• Experience with AI and machine learning technologies.
• Strong organizational and project management skills.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation range of $255K - $363K.
• Flexible working arrangements.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development.
• Collaborative and supportive work environment.

Pay

$255K - $363K

Schedule

Full-time