Founding Engineering Lead

ABOUT THE ROLE Lead engineering for an early-stage SaaS team building applied AI products for enterprise software. You will partner with the technical leadership team on architecture, product direction, and machine learning strategy while leading a small engineering pod and remaining hands-on with critical work. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Build and lead a pod of three to four engineers, supporting their growth, performance, and hiring while shipping key work yourself. - Own platform architecture and make build-versus-buy and infrastructure decisions with product and revenue impact. - Set engineering standards for AI-assisted development, including review criteria, definition of done, release cadence, and on-call practices. - Lead technical designs and initial implementations for new initiatives. - Evaluate applied ML research and determine which techniques are suitable for production systems. - Partner with technical leadership to shape the product roadmap, model strategy, and ML approach. - Initially spend most of your time building, with the balance focused on team leadership. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - Typically 5 to 8 years of engineering experience, with 4 to 5 years considered for exceptional candidates. - Experience training and deploying machine learning models in production, beyond integrating LLM APIs. - End-to-end ownership of technical architecture, infrastructure decisions, and build-versus-buy tradeoffs. - Experience setting engineering standards and leading or managing engineers while continuing to code. - Strong applied ML judgment across classical methods and newer approaches, including transformers and agent applications. - Recent experience personally shipping production software, comfort with ambiguity and inherited code, and effective use of AI coding agents. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Annual salary range: $200,000 to $400,000 USD. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site in New York City, United States.