Engineering Manager

Ampersand; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Ampersand is seeking a Founding Engineering Manager in San Francisco to join a fast-growing AI infrastructure company at a pivotal moment. You will work closely with founders and a high-retention engineering team, where you’ll mentor and grow talent, ensuring a culture of craft, trust, and ownership.

This hands-on position demands engagement with technical work, project management, and fostering an engineering culture that embraces fast shipping and innovation. Strong leadership and communication skills are essential.

Qualifications

• 2+ years leading engineering teams in a startup or high-growth environment.
• Experience with managing project-based contract engineers.
• Strong communication skills to support an async-first team.

Responsibilities

• Mentor and grow a high-performing engineering team.
• Own onboarding for new engineers to ensure productivity.
• Drive project management for customer deliverables.

Skills

Leadership in engineering

Technical execution

Experience with Go, TypeScript, React

Strong technical judgment

Job description

Responsibilities

• We’re looking for a Founding Engineering Manager to join a fast-growing AI infrastructure company at a pivotal moment. You’ll work directly with the founders and a small, high-retention engineering team, including people who came up through Google, Meta, Cruise, and AWS and have chosen to stay
• The culture here is intentional: high craft, high trust, and high ownership. Your job is to protect that while scaling it
• This is a hands‑on role. You’ll be close to the technical work, close to the people doing it, and close to the decisions that shape how the team grows
• Engineering Leadership — Mentor and grow a high‑performing team across full‑stack, customer, and forward‑deployed engineering. Run regular 1:1s, give clear feedback, and build the conditions where engineers do their best work and stay
• Team Scaling — Own onboarding for new engineers so they ramp quickly and become productive. Partner with founders on hiring and career development as the org grows beyond its founding core
• Technical Execution — Spend approximately 20% of your time doing IC work — staying close to the codebase and tooling. Drive project management for customer deliverables, especially work that spans multiple engineers or product areas
• Engineering Culture — Create the conditions for engineers to ship fast: code maintainability, internal documentation, development workflows, QA tools and automation. Lead by example on AI‑accelerated development — advocate for using AI to improve velocity while maintaining reliability and quality
• Security & Compliance — Own security and compliance alongside our Founding Operations Lead, including SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR
• Distributed Collaboration — Manage project‑based contract engineers and globally distributed connector contributors

Qualifications

• Experience with Go, TypeScript, React, or similar stacks is a plus
• You’ve led teams through complex technical initiatives and are excited to do it again
• Background in developer tools, APIs, infrastructure platforms, or AI‑native products is preferred
• You build engineering culture, not just org charts: Ownership, craft, and accountability are things you’ve actually installed somewhere before
• Strong technical judgment — you can go deep on architecture and system design when it matters
• Significant software engineering experience, including 2+ years leading engineering teams in a startup or high‑growth environment (even if you didn’t hold a formal Manager title)
• Excellent written communication; the team is async‑first and decisions travel in writing