VP of Engineering, Applications
A1 · Palo Alto, CA · 2 wk ago
HybridEngineeringFull-time
What You'll be Doing
- Own the application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile, and desktop.
- Lead and grow a small, senior applications team, including backend, mobile, and desktop engineers.
- Set the architectural direction for AI-powered product workflows, APIs, and client integrations.
- Ensure AI capabilities are integrated into the product with clear abstractions, predictable behavior, and graceful failure modes.
- Partner closely with Machine Learning leadership to translate model capability into shippable product features.
- Make high-impact decisions across latency, cost, reliability, security, and user experience.
- Establish clear ownership boundaries across backend, mobile, and desktop to prevent architectural drift.
- Ensure production readiness: observability, monitoring, retries, fallbacks, privacy, and cost controls.
- Balance speed and discipline – shipping quickly without compromising long-term system quality.
What You Will Need
- Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems.
- Strong hands-on background building and shipping backend systems used in production.
- Experience delivering AI-powered products, with a deep understanding of model integration trade-offs.
- Excellent system design skills across services, APIs, clients, and data flows.
- Comfort operating across platforms (backend, mobile, desktop), even if your depth is in one.
- Proven ability to make high-impact technical decisions under ambiguity.
- A strong bias toward shipping, iteration, and learning from real-world usage.
- A low ego, strong judgment, and the ability to raise the technical bar for the entire applications organization.