Engineering Director

Maze; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Significant equity upside

Partnership with experienced CTO

Opportunity to build an AI-native company

Job summary

A well-funded startup in the United States seeks an Engineering Director to co-lead their engineering organization. You'll collaborate closely with the CTO to scale the team from 10 to 25+ engineers, ensuring exceptional engineering culture and customer-focused operations. Ideal candidates have extensive experience in ML/AI engineering, proven leadership, and a track record of scaling teams through hypergrowth. This position offers significant upside including equity and the opportunity to shape an AI-native company fostering innovative cybersecurity solutions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in engineering leadership with experience in ML/AI.
• Directly scaled teams from 20-100+ people during hypergrowth.
• Strong technical background with ability to review code.
• Proven track record of customer-first leadership.
• Experience handling performance management and career development.
• Ability to solve complex cross-team coordination challenges.
• Excited about shared ownership of engineering outcomes.
• Comfort operating in fast-paced, ambiguous environments.

Responsibilities

• Co-lead engineering in partnership with the CTO.
• Ensure all engineering decisions prioritize customer impact.
• Manage day-to-day engineering operations across product teams.
• Build and maintain a high-performance engineering culture.
• Drive cross-team coordination to avoid idle resources.
• Ensure technical excellence and quality standards.
• Build processes for navigating challenges of hypergrowth.

Skills

ML/AI Engineering Leadership

Scaling Engineering Teams

Technical Credibility

Customer-Obsessed Leadership

Exceptional People Leadership

Coordination Mastery

True Partnership Mindset

Hypergrowth Mindset

Job description

Summary of the Role:

As Engineering Director at Maze, you'll be the operational co-leader of our engineering organization, working in extreme sync with our CTO as true partners to scale our team from 10 to 25+ engineers while maintaining our high-performance culture and technical excellence. This is a unique opportunity to join as one of the early leadership team members of a well-funded startup building at the intersection of generative AI and cybersecurity.

You’ll take full ownership of day-to-day engineering operations, people management, and cross-team coordination, enabling our CTO to focus on strategic technical decisions, architecture, and external relationships. Your success will be measured by the revenue impact of engineering decisions and customer value delivery, not delivery timelines or process adherence. This role is perfect for an exceptional people leader who has scaled ML/AI engineering teams through hypergrowth, thinks like a business owner, and wants to build something extraordinary from the ground up.

Your Contributions to Our Journey:

• Co-Lead Engineering with Daily Partnership: Work in extreme sync with our CTO through daily collaboration, joint decision-making, and shared ownership of engineering outcomes - this is true partnership, not traditional reporting
• Drive Customer-Focused Engineering: Ensure all engineering decisions prioritize customer impact and revenue generation, measuring success by business value delivered rather than delivery timelines or process metrics
• Lead and Scale Engineering Operations: Take full ownership of day-to-day engineering coordination across 4 product teams, ensuring seamless collaboration, clear priorities, and efficient delivery as we scale from 10 to 25+ engineers
• Build Exceptional Engineering Culture: Directly manage technical leads and the broader engineering team, conducting regular 1:1s, performance management, and career development while maintaining our high-performance standards and culture
• Drive Cross-Team Coordination: Solve the "middle layer" coordination challenges that come with hypergrowth, ensuring no engineer is idle, priorities are crystal clear, and the "machine keeps moving" efficiently across all teams
• Enable Technical Excellence: Work closely with technical leads to maintain code quality, establish engineering best practices, and ensure our technical standards scale with the team growth
• Scale Through Growing Pains: Navigate the inevitable challenges of hypergrowth with grace, building processes and systems that allow us to move fast without breaking things while always prioritizing customer value

What You Need to Be Successful:

• Proven ML/AI Engineering Leadership: 5+ years in engineering leadership with hands-on experience scaling engineering teams at ML/AI/DataScience product companies - you must have managed teams building ML/AI features, been personally involved in ML/AI architecture decisions, and worked where ML/AI was core to the product
• Proven Scaling Experience: Direct experience scaling engineering teams from 20-100+ people, having lived through the specific challenges of hypergrowth in technical product companies
• Technical Credibility: Strong technical background with ability to review code, contribute to architecture discussions, and earn the respect of senior engineers - capable of being a technical contributor when needed
• Customer-Obsessed Leadership: Proven track record of leading engineering teams with a customer-first mindset, measuring success by revenue impact and customer value rather than internal metrics
• Exceptional People Leadership: Proven track record of managing and developing engineering teams, with experience handling performance management, career development, and building high-performing engineering culture
• Coordination Mastery: Experience solving complex cross-team coordination challenges, with ability to keep multiple engineering teams aligned and productive during rapid scaling
• True Partnership Mindset: Thrives in daily collaboration and joint decision-making, excited about shared ownership of engineering outcomes rather than traditional hierarchical reporting
• Hypergrowth Mindset: Comfort operating in fast-paced, ambiguous environments with the ability to build scalable processes while maintaining team velocity and morale
• Nice to Haves:
  • Cybersecurity or AI/ML product experience (at least one preferred)
  • Ex-founder background with scaling experience
  • Track record at successful scale-ups with desire to go early-stage again
  • Experience managing technical leads and distributed teams

Why Join Us:

• Ambitious Challenge: We're using generative AI (LLMs and agents) to solve some of the most pressing challenges in cybersecurity today. You'll be scaling the engineering organization at the cutting edge of this field, building the team that delivers breakthrough solutions for security teams.
• Expert Team: We are a team of hands-on leaders with experience in Big Tech and Scale-ups. Our team has been part of the leadership teams behind multiple acquisitions and an IPO.
• Impactful Work: Cybersecurity is a force for good - helping to stop cyber attacks ultimately helps deliver better outcomes for all of us. Your leadership will directly enable the team that protects organizations worldwide.
• Build an AI-native Company: We're building a new company in the AI era with the opportunity to design everything from the ground up - you'll architect the engineering organization and culture that scales our AI-powered platform.
• Leadership Growth: Direct partnership with experienced CTO, significant equity upside, and the opportunity to build and lead the engineering function through our next phase of hypergrowth.