Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Headstart builds production AI systems for enterprise clients and is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager, Applied AI. The role combines hands-on technical leadership with team development, staffing, hiring, and partnership responsibilities, including reviewing agent and evaluation designs and supporting client engagements.
Responsibilities
- Your team. Hold a high bar and grow each engineer through direct, actionable feedback. Develop senior engineers into tech leads. Give clear priorities and expectations without adding process before we understand the problem
- Technical leadership. Review architecture, agent, prompt, and eval design. Step into the hardest technical and client situations, like production regressions and unclear requirements, and make the call. Raise trouble early, while it's cheap to fix
- Closing the loop. Spot patterns across engagements and turn them into standing practice, reference implementations, and platform capabilities. Check that the next engagement is faster because of it
- Staffing. Shape who works on which engagement, plan transitions ahead, and flag risks before they reach a client
- Hiring. Run hiring for your team, from sourcing to onboarding. You define the bar
- Partnerships. Work closely with product, client partners, and client stakeholders so each engagement lands
Skills
- 4+ years managing engineers, including senior and staff, with real experience hiring and developing them
- 8+ years in software engineering, deep enough to review designs and challenge the team's approach
- Hands-on with Python
- Experience delivering software in real client environments and taking something from zero to one, whether a team, a practice, or a hiring process
- Curious about agents, evals, and multi-agent systems, with a sense of where they're reliable and where a person needs to take the wheel
- Fluent with AI coding tools
- Management experience in a consulting, services, or forward deployed engineering organization
Benefits
- Competitive equity
- 401k with 4.5% employer match
- Fully covered medical, dental, and vision premiums
- Monthly wellness stipend
- Citi Bike
- Pre-tax commuter benefits
- 12 weeks parental leave, with an optional 4-week ramp-up at 50%
- Loft office in Soho with lunch and snacks
- Hybrid in NYC, and fully remote in the rest of the US and Canada
Company Overview