AI Engineering Manager

Tech Lead/Manager

San Francisco - Permanent - Hybrid

The Role

Our client is a Series A firm looking for an AI Engineering Manager responsible for leading and scaling an AI engineering team. They lead people, foster a healthy and productive working environment, plan long-term architectural initiatives, uphold a high bar for engineering excellence, and support team growth.

They hold accountability for decisions related to AI architecture and team development. The role involves driving architectural direction and executing the AI roadmap, while supporting both the technical and professional growth of engineers. The position reports into senior technical leadership.

AI engineering managers in this organization are expected to remain hands-on, contributing through activities such as bug fixes, pull request reviews, and informed technical discussions. Leadership is grounded in strong technical capability, trust, and the ability to remove obstacles for the team. The individual is a dependable technical leader who approaches problems with energy and pragmatism.

Responsibilities

• Directly manage and grow a team of AI engineers
• Hire, mentor, and retain high-performing AI engineering talent
• Set and uphold engineering quality and performance standards
• Conduct performance reviews and support professional development
• Maintain a healthy, collaborative, and productive engineering environment
• Plan and execute AI architectural investments in collaboration with product and engineering leadership

Ideal Profile

• Experience working in an early-stage, product-focused startup environment
• Proven experience building production systems with LLMs integrated into workflows
• Experience experimenting with and implementing emerging LLM frameworks, practices, and standards
• Ability to move quickly while maintaining high-quality outcomes
• Direct, clear, and constructive communicator with leadership, peers, and reports
• Strong background in mentoring and developing engineers
• Demonstrated architectural expertise designing scalable, future-proof systems and interfaces
• Experience managing cross-functional or multi-team initiatives
• Experience working in regulated environments or where data privacy and security are critical
• Data-driven leadership mindset

Research indicates that men will apply to a role when they only meet 50-60% of the descriptions, however, when looking at women and other minority groups, they can look for up to a 99% match in order to apply to a role. If you feel you are a fit for our role, please still apply, don't worry if you don't tick every single box. We'd still love to hear from you. We encourage underrepresented talent to apply to all our roles & support accessibility needs.