Head of Engineering

About the role

Our client is seeking a visionary Head of Engineering to lead their engineering organization, overseeing both the core platform team and client implementation teams. This role requires a highly hands-on leader who will define technical strategy, establish engineering standards, and mentor a growing team. Our client expects the successful candidate to manage multiple engineering initiatives simultaneously while owning the technical direction of the platform. As the organization scales from an early-stage team to a larger entity, our client provides a unique opportunity for this individual to shape the culture and technical architecture. This position offers a direct path to a CTO role for the right candidate.

Responsibilities

• Define technical strategy and establish engineering standards
• Mentor a growing engineering team
• Manage multiple engineering initiatives simultaneously
• Own the technical direction of the platform
• Shape the culture and technical architecture as the organization scales

Critical Requirements

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Proven leadership experience as an Engineering Lead, Engineering Manager, or Founding Engineer
• Demonstrated success in building, scaling, and mentoring engineering teams
• Strong hands-on experience building and deploying AI agents in production environments
• Expertise in AI agent orchestration, tool use, retrieval, structured extraction, and human-in-the-loop systems
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems and multi-tenant backend architectures
• Experience with Kubernetes, infrastructure-as-code, and multi-cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)
• Experience managing release cycles, staged rollouts, monitoring, and on-call operations

Important Requirements

• Experience owning delivery across multiple concurrent teams and workstreams
• Strong understanding of data modeling and enterprise integrations
• Experience working with APIs, OAuth, and enterprise ERP/CRM systems
• Ability to make build-versus-buy decisions regarding AI frameworks and infrastructure
• Experience operating software across diverse deployment environments including VPCs and air-gapped systems

Nice to Have Requirements

• Forward-deployed or customer-facing engineering experience
• Background in process mining, workflow automation, or enterprise process discovery
• Previous experience as a Founding Engineer or CTO at a venture-backed startup
• Experience with SOC 2 compliance, security audits, and incident response
• Published research or open-source contributions related to AI agents

About the company

Our client is a seed-stage startup focused on building advanced AI agent systems for enterprise environments. Our client provides a platform that integrates with complex ERP and CRM systems to automate operational processes. Our client offers a high-impact environment where engineering leaders have significant ownership over technical vision and organizational growth. Our client is committed to building systems that improve with every customer deployment and values direct exposure to senior decision-makers at large enterprises.

Pay

$200,000 - $300,000 per year

Schedule

Full-time, on-site in San Francisco, CA