Engineering Director, Agent Context

Hex; New York (NY); On-site; USD 221,000 - 348,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive total rewards package

Comprehensive health benefits

Flexible paid time off

Job summary

Hex is looking for an experienced engineering leader based in New York, NY, to drive the strategy and growth of their AI context platform. You will lead multiple teams, manage engineering talent, and set technical standards. The role requires over 5 years of experience in AI-driven products, combined with strong management skills. The compensation includes a competitive salary range of $221,000 to $348,500, comprehensive health benefits, and flexible paid time off.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience leading engineering teams on AI-driven products.
• Exceptional ability to design technical abstractions for product vision.
• Curiosity and strong intuition about AI agent behavior.
• Proven people management skills, with experience managing managers.
• Clear approach to building high-performing teams.
• Hands-on technical leader when necessary.

Responsibilities

• Lead multiple teams working on Hex’s context platform.
• Serve as people manager for engineering managers and tech leads.
• Recruit and grow a team of at least 15 software engineers.
• Drive technical strategy and review designs.

Skills

Leading engineering teams

Identifying technical abstractions

Managing managers

Building high-performing teams

Hands-on technical leadership

Tools

Typescript

React

Apollo GraphQL

Express

Postgres

Redis

Kubernetes

Terraform

Helm

AWS

Job description

About the role

We are looking for an experienced engineering leader to drive the strategy, execution, and growth of Hex’s state‑of‑the‑art AI context platform.

Our ambition is simple but powerful: Hex should get better every time you use it. With tens of thousands of people relying on Hex daily to do deep analytical work, we are uniquely positioned to learn from usage and continuously improve the intelligence of our system.

The Context Studio is at the heart of this vision. It is the surface area where users can understand how AI agents interact with their data, identify where quality falls short, and actively improve the context that drives better outcomes. We are building an entirely new development lifecycle for context, one that blends human insight with automated learning and iteration.

The broader AI landscape is evolving quickly, and our team is tackling foundational questions such as how to detect and debug failures in agent reasoning, how to structure and manage business context effectively, how to balance human‑in‑the‑loop systems with autonomous improvement, and how to integrate our context layer with the growing ecosystem of AI‑powered tools and workflows.

What you will do

• Lead an organization of multiple teams working on Hex’s context platform
• Serve as people manager for line‑level engineering managers, tech leads, and senior ICs, setting a high bar and empowering them to do their best work
• Recruit exceptional engineering talent, growing to a team of at least 15 software engineers
• Drive technical strategy, review designs, and occasionally get hands on to move the needle

About You

• 5+ years experience leading engineering teams working on complex, data‑intensive, or AI‑driven products and SaaS platforms
• Exceptional ability to identify and design the right technical abstractions to accelerate an ambitious and evolving product vision
• Deep curiosity for, and strong intuition about, state‑of‑the‑art AI agent behavior and context systems
• Proven track record as a people manager, with experience (or clear potential) managing managers and scaling high‑performing teams
• Brings a clear playbook for building high‑performing teams: setting clear technical standards, hiring and developing strong talent, and creating environments where extraordinary engineers can do their best work
• Deeply technical leader who is not afraid to roll up your sleeves and get hands on when necessary

Our stack

Our product is a web‑based notebook and app authoring platform. Our frontend is built with Typescript and React, using a combination of Apollo GraphQL and Redux for managing application state and data. On the backend, we also use Typescript to power an Express/Apollo GraphQL server that interacts with Postgres, Redis, and Kubernetes to manage our database and Python kernels. Our backend is tightly integrated with our infrastructure and CI/CD, where we use a combination of Terraform, Helm, and AWS to deploy and maintain our stack.

Location & Compensation

This is a full‑time role, based out of our New York, NY office hub. Employees are encouraged to come into the office at least twice a week, with Tuesdays and Thursdays being our main in‑person days.

In addition to our unique culture, Hex proudly offers a competitive total rewards package, including but not limited to, market‑bench salary & equity, comprehensive health benefits, and flexible paid time off.

Salary range: $221,000-$348,500

The salary range shown may be a reflection of additional factors such as geographical location and skill ranges/levels we’re open to. Placement in the salary range will be decided upon completion of the interview process, taking into account factors like leaving room for growth, internal fairness & parity, your demonstrated skills, and the depth of your experience. Our Recruiting team will be able to provide more details during the interview process.