AI Engineering Manager - Agentic & Applied AI
Location: United States (Remote)
Compensation: $350-420K base + 15% bonus + meaningful equity
Reports to: CTO
About the Company
We’re working with a rapidly scaling AI startup growing ~10% month-over-month, building production-grade, agentic AI systems. With a Series C on the horizon, they are investing heavily in their core AI platform and multi-agent infrastructure.
This is an opportunity to lead world-class AI teams working on applied AI, applied research, and evaluation systems - building real-world AI agents deployed at scale.
The Role
We’re hiring an AI Engineering Manager to lead three AI-focused squads:
- Applied AI
- Applied Research AI
You will start with 5 direct reports, with expected growth to ~10 engineers over the next 12 months (mid-level and senior ICs).
This is a technical leadership role. You won’t be coding day-to-day, but you must deeply understand architecture, model fine‑tuning, and multi‑agent production systems. You will lead by example, run tight standups, and bring technical legitimacy to a team of very smart engineers.
What You’ll Do
- Lead and scale three AI squads across applied AI, applied research, and evaluation
- Own delivery of agentic AI systems running in production at scale
- Oversee fine‑tuning pipelines, model iteration cycles, and evaluation frameworks
- Guide development of multi‑agent systems
- Ensure production reliability, scalability, and performance
- Drive technical decision‑making across architecture and tooling
- Run disciplined team operations (tight standups, strong execution cadence)
What We’re Looking For
Core Requirements
- Experience leading AI/ML engineering teams in production environments
- Hands‑on experience (recent, last 12–18 months) with:
- Agentic systems
- AI agents in production
- Model fine‑tuning workflows
- Strong architectural depth - must understand the code even if not coding daily
- Experience operating distributed teams
- Proven ability to run high‑performing engineering teams
Ideal Background
- Experience from AI-native companies or strong AI groups
- High-performing AI startups that have shipped agent-based systems
Who This Is For
- A technical AI leader who wants to build, not just research
- Someone who prefers convergence and shipping over academic exploration
- A disciplined operator who can run a tight ship
- Someone excited by hypergrowth and real-world impact