Engineering Director, AI Engineering

Hex Technologies Inc.; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 300,000 - 425,000; Full time

Job summary

Hex Technologies Inc. is seeking its first leader for the AI engineering team to shape research strategy, oversee post-training evaluation, and guide continuous learning. You will partner with the CEO and CTO to align research with company goals and drive impactful AI initiatives.

You will hire and manage an exceptional team of AI engineers and researchers, while producing high-quality technical content and collaborating with customers to showcase Hex research outcomes.

Qualifications

• 5+ years leading applied research, AI engineering, or ML engineering teams.
• Deep expertise in modern AI tech, LLMs, transformer models, and agentic workflows.
• Passion for delivering AI-powered product experiences and business impact.
• Strong communicator and collaborator, uplifting product and engineering teams.
• Talent magnet with ability to attract and retain top AI talent.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute research strategy with CEO/CTO across post-training, evaluation, and retrieval.
• Manage research partnerships with startups and major labs.
• Produce high-quality technical content sharing Hex research outcomes externally.
• Hire and manage an exceptional team of AI engineers and researchers.

Skills

Leadership

AI/ML expertise

Communication

Talent magnet

RL experience

Product focus

Job description

About the role:

The shape of data work is changing rapidly, and Hex is the company pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, from the launch of the industry’s first data agent last year, to the first fully generative dashboard experience earlier this year, to building a frontier benchmark measuring analytical prowess. Data teams at Cursor, Clay, Hubspot, Chime, and many more use Hex to empower everyone in their organization to use data with trust and confidence.

Behind all of these innovations is Hex’s AI engineering team: a team that blends research and technology with building incredible products that users can’t live without. We equally love diving deep into the internals of the latest research papers as we do shipping features and working closely with customers.

Our team is an eclectic melange of mathematicians, recovering marketers, Data People, poker players, and one person who communicates exclusively via Bufo emojis. We are looking for our first leader – if this sounds exciting, we’d love to hear from you!

What you will do

• Partner with the CEO and CTO to define and execute on research strategy across post-training, model evaluation, search and retrieval, and continuous learning

• Manage research partnerships across a wide range of partners, from small startups to major labs

• Drive the production of high quality technical content for sharing Hex research outcomes externally across a variety of audiences and platforms

• Hire and manage an exceptional team of AI engineers and researchers

About you

• 5+ years leading applied research, AI engineering, or ML engineering teams

• Deep expertise in modern AI technology as well as classical ML systems, including LLMs and transformer models, agentic workflows, context management, and agentic evals

• Passion for delivering exceptional product experiences backed by AI and an obsession for driving business outcomes

• Strong communicator and collaborator, empowering and upleveling product and engineering counterparts

• Talent magnet, with the ability to attract and retain exceptional AI talent

• Experience working with RL environments is not required, but is a plus

If you’re looking for more info about what we’re up to, check out our blog or some recent podcasts.

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.

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

The salary range for this role is: $300,375 - $425,000

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

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.

By submitting an application the candidate consents to the use of their personal information in accordance with the Hex Privacy policy: https://learn.hex.tech/docs/trust/privacy-policy.

About Hex

Hex is growing our team of builders on a mission to make everyone a data person. Our platform solves key pain points with today’s data and analytics tooling, and empowers anyone to explore data using natural language, with or without code, on trusted context. Thousands of customers like Ramp, Figma, Stubhub, Anthropic, and Gamma love Hex for our beautiful UI, agentic superpowers, and boundless flexibility.

Hex has raised over $100M from leading investors like Sequoia, a16z, Snowflake and Amplify. With office hubs in San Francisco and New York, as well as remote team members throughout the US and UK, we’re a high-agency team that ships fast and has fun doing it. Check out our Intro to Hex video and employee handbook to learn more about what it’s like to work at Hex.

Hex Technologies uses AI-assisted tools as part of our application review process, including for resume screening and fraud detection. These tools help our team evaluate applications and verify applicant information. All AI-generated recommendations are reviewed by a member of our recruiting team before any hiring decision is made. No application is automatically rejected based solely on an AI tool's output.