AI-Driven Engineering Leader: Scale from 5 to 20+

Zania; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Zania is seeking an Eng Manager to own engineering end-to-end, drive architecture decisions, and scale the team from ~5 to 20+ engineers in the next year. This role combines hands-on technical leadership with hiring, cadence, and culture to ship world-class AI-enabled workflows.

You will partner with the CEO on product direction, build scalable LLM orchestration, and establish production-grade practices. Ideal candidates have founder DNA and proven ability to deliver enterprise-grade AI systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of software engineering experience with at least 3 years in a technical leadership or founding role at a product-led company
• Demonstrated experience scaling an engineering team from small to 20+ engineers, hiring and retaining senior talent
• Deep, hands-on experience shipping AI/ML or agentic systems to production at enterprise scale
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for customer-facing technical conversations with the CEO

Responsibilities

• Own all engineering output: product quality, velocity, reliability, and security.
• Build the engineering team from current size to 15–20 in 12 months; personally involved in every hire.
• Set and enforce a shipping culture — weekly demos, continuous deployment, minimal process overhead.
• Partner directly with the CEO on product direction, prioritization, and customer-facing technical conversations.
• Architect and evolve the platform (LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, compliance automation) for enterprise scale.
• Establish lightweight but real engineering practices: CI/CD, observability, on-call, code review standards.

Skills

Strong written and verbal comms

Hands-on AI/ML production

Engineering team scaling

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Zania is seeking an Eng Manager to own engineering end-to-end, drive architecture decisions, and scale the team from ~5 to 20+ engineers in the next year. This role combines hands-on technical leadership with hiring, cadence, and culture to ship world-class AI-enabled workflows.

You will partner with the CEO on product direction, build scalable LLM orchestration, and establish production-grade practices. Ideal candidates have founder DNA and proven ability to deliver enterprise-grade AI systems.