Head of Software Engineering
About Us
We're building the intelligence layer for the home: ambient, proactive, and built into a family of devices, a central hub, accessories, and the software that ties them together. We’re a Series A startup backed by a tier-1 VC & technology partners, with an ex-unicorn founder. Early team, moving fast.
About the Role
This is a player-coach role at a critical moment. You'll manage and scale a high-performing team while staying close to the work — setting engineering standards, unblocking execution, and ensuring we ship fast without accumulating debt that slows us down later.
Responsibilities
- Lead, grow, and retain a world-class software engineering team across consumer software and AI engineering execution — sprint planning, resourcing, delivery, and team health
- Set and enforce engineering standards: code quality, architecture patterns, review culture, and on-call practices
- Partner with product and design to scope work, surface tradeoffs, and hit milestones
- Recruit aggressively — you'll be a key part of building the team around you
- Serve as the connective tissue between individual engineers and company leadership
Requirements
- 8+ years in software engineering, with 3+ years managing engineering teams
- Deep experience shipping consumer-facing software — you know what a polished, high-quality product takes
- Fluent in AI/ML-integrated systems — you've worked on products where models are core to the experience, not a bolt-on
- Strong people manager: you develop engineers, give direct feedback, and build team culture
- Execution-oriented — you keep things moving, resolve ambiguity, and protect the team from noise
- Technically credible enough to earn respect from strong engineers without needing to be in every design decision
Why Join
You'll be building and leading the engineering team behind a product that's genuinely new — an ambient AI presence in the home. Small team, real ownership, close to the decision-making, and the opportunity to set engineering culture from scratch. We're well-capitalized and moving fast.