VP of Engineering

Relocation assistance is provided for candidates out-of-state.

The Company

This AI-native startup raised $30M seed and is building a revolutionary AI product. The product works by gathering a company’s information from across its many systems and organizes it so AI agents can work with real business context, while the product is installed in the customer’s own environment (on-prem). The company has early design partners ranging from healthcare, government, retail, and enterprise companies partnering with them and preparing for a production launch next year. The founder has built and exited successful startups in the past and is seeking a new leader to have a seat at the executive table.

Your Mission

As the VP of Engineering, you will lead the engineering team and be accountable for getting the product from early concept to something customers run in production. At this size, the job is a mix of strategy and hands-on management, not purely technical. Your role will be to partner with the executive team on measurable goals, communicate with other department leaders on engineering capabilities, and lead the team by fostering a fun and collaborative culture.

The Team

The engineering team is a collaborative and fun group, who are moldable and willing to learn. They do happy hours, get together for coding sessions, and do team outings (ice skating included). The team is excited to welcome their new leader in this role and get hands-on mentorship.

What You'll Do

• Culture. Whether its team bonding, happy hours, or celebrating wins; this person will find what makes each engineer unique and bring out their best skills.
• Team. Continue to hire strong engineers, set expectations, and manage measurable goals that will challenge your team and help them grow.
• Communicate. Turn the roadmap into shipped software, run sprint planning and prioritization, and make the trade-offs between speed and quality.
• Strategy. Understand the state of the product now and what needs to be accomplished before launching.
• Partner. Work closely with product, marketing, and other non-engineering teams, and explain where the product stands while saying 'no' to certain requests.
• Architecture. Work with the interim-CTO along with the lead engineer on the stack (TypeScript, Python, Rust, on AWS and Azure) and on how the product runs on-prem.
• Customer-facing. Translate what current design partners need into engineering priorities and report progress to the founders.
• Production-ready. Ensure successful on-prem deployment: reliability, security, observability, and installation in customer environments.
• Success. Set up hiring, code review, AI-assisted development practices, and release habits, with the engineering team and company.

Requirements

• 7+ years experience at an early-stage company.
• 5+ years experience leading engineering teams, managing executive expectations, and growing an engineering team.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• Proven experience shipping enterprise or B2B software, ideally with security or on-prem constraints.
• Experience growing a team through promotions or adding new headcount.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work collaboratively with cross-functional teams and senior leaders.

Nice-to-have

• Exposure to AI or LLM products is a plus.

Benefits

• Relocation assistance provided (US based only).
• Unlimited PTO.
• 9 Paid Holidays.
• 401k with 6% Employer Match.
• Medical coverage for Health, Dental, Vision.

Compensation: $250,000 - $400,000 + equity.

Don’t meet every requirement? We encourage you to apply.

Our client is looking for the right leader, not a perfect checklist. We’d like to hear from you even if some items here are missing from your experience. We'd like to see you apply and encourage you to look out for future opportunities with, Recruitly Talent Partners.