Engineering Manager, Agent

Sierra; New York, San Francisco (NY, CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

Medical, dental, vision benefits

Retirement plan

Parental leave

Fertility and family benefits through

Lunch and snacks

Discretionary benefit stipend

Free alphorn lessons

Job summary

Sierra seeks a senior engineering leader to design and deliver production-grade AI agents and scale them across industries. You’ll guide an IC-to-manager transition, owning the full ADLC lifecycle from pilot to deployment while maintaining technical excellence and customer impact.

You’ll collaborate with large enterprises and innovative startups, shaping Sierra’s platform through customer feedback and cross‑functional partnerships. A CS degree and hands‑on leadership are required.

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering teams that build end-to-end production systems.
• Ability to guide teams through ambiguous, fast-changing environments.
• Strong communication across technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and delivery of production-grade AI agents.
• Own the ADLC lifecycle from pilot to deployment.
• Partner with enterprises and startups to scale AI agents.
• Shape Sierra’s platform by aligning customer needs with roadmap.

Skills

AI agents

Team leadership

Customer collaboration

Communication skills

CS degree

Education

Bachelor's in CS

Job description

About us

At Sierra, we’re building a platform to enable every company in the world to build better, more human customer experiences with AI. We partner with industry leaders such as SoftBank, Uber, Rivian, CLEAR, and Sutter Health. We are primarily an in-person company based in San Francisco, with growing offices across North America, Europe, and Asia.

We are guided by a set of values that are at the core of our actions and define our culture: Trust, Customer Obsession, Craftsmanship, Intensity, and Family. These values are the foundation of our work, and we are committed to upholding them in everything we do.

Our co-founders are Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor. Bret currently serves as Board Chair of OpenAI. Previously, he was co-CEO of Salesforce (which had acquired the company he founded, Quip) and CTO of Facebook. Bret was also one of Google's earliest product managers and co-creator of Google Maps. Before founding Sierra, Clay spent 18 years at Google, where he most recently led Google Labs. Earlier, he started and led Google’s AR/VR effort, Project Starline, and Google Lens. Before that, Clay led the product and design teams for Google Workspace.

What you’ll do

• Lead the design and delivery of production-grade AI agents: We believe the best managers lead from being hands-on and close to the work. Our managers operate as ICs for their first 3-6 months at Sierra, and then evolve to manage and grow a team of engineers, all while building highly performant, reliable, and intuitive AI agents that are central, mission-critical, and directly drive Sierra’s growth. These aren’t prototypes—they are powerful, scalable systems running in production environments across industries like finance, healthcare, and commerce. You’ll ensure technical excellence, operational reliability, and high customer impact.

• Own the Agent Development Life Cycle (ADLC): You’ll both build directly, and guide your team through the full lifecycle—from initial pilot through deployment and continuous iteration—coaching engineers to set and maintain the standard for ADLC best practices. You’ll ensure projects are delivered on time, meet customer needs, and scale effectively in production environments.

• Partner with large enterprises and cutting-edge startups: You’ll collaborate with leaders at some of the world’s largest enterprises to understand their most pressing business challenges, and guide your team in building AI agents that transform how they operate at scale. You’ll also work with innovative startups in Silicon Valley, embedding AI agents across their entire business stack to drive innovation and efficiency.

• Shape the future of the platform: Your team’s direct work with customers will guide the evolution of Sierra’s core platform. You’ll surface unmet needs, prioritize initiatives, and collaborate with research, product, and platform teams to shape the future of AI agent development and Sierra’s product.

What you'll bring

• Experience building and scaling, as well as leading engineering teams that build and scale, end-to-end production systems

• Strong technical problem-solving skills and the ability to guide teams through ambiguous, fast-changing environments

• A leadership style that comes from being hands-on, and blends high standards with empathy, fostering both speed and quality

• Proven ability to work closely with customers and translate business needs into technical deliverables

• Excellent communication skills across technical and non-technical audiences

• Degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Even better...

• AI-related experience (experience developing AI agents a plus).

• Experience building or deploying AI/LLM systems in production

• Background as a founder, engineering lead, or startup builder with high ownership and urgency

• Familiarity with tools for today’s AI agents: eval frameworks, agent tooling, RAG pipelines, and prompt engineering

• Prior experience with React, TypeScript, and/or Go

• Experience interfacing with customers or leading technical projects with external stakeholders

Our values

• Trust: We build trust with our customers with our accountability, empathy, quality, and responsiveness. We build trust in AI by making it more accessible, safe, and useful. We build trust with each other by showing up for each other professionally and personally, creating an environment that enables all of us to do our best work.

• Customer Obsession: We deeply understand our customers’ business goals and relentlessly focus on driving outcomes, not just technical milestones. Everyone at the company knows and spends time with our customers. When our customer is having an issue, we drop everything and fix it.

• Craftsmanship: We get the details right, from the words on the page to the system architecture. We have good taste. When we notice something isn’t right, we take the time to fix it. We are proud of the products we produce. We continuously self-reflect to continuously self-improve.

• Intensity: We know we don’t have the luxury of patience. We play to win. We care about our product being the best, and when it isn’t, we fix it. When we fail, we talk about it openly and without blame so we succeed the next time.

• Family: We know that balance and intensity are compatible, and we model it in our actions and processes. We are the best technology company for parents. We support and respect each other and celebrate each other’s personal and professional achievements.

What we offer

We want our benefits to reflect our values and offer the following to full-time employees:

• Flexible (unlimited) paid time off

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits for you and your family

• Life insurance and disability benefits

• Retirement plan dependent on country of employment

• Parental leave

• Fertility and family building benefits through Carrot

• Lunch, as well as delicious snacks and coffee to keep you energized

• Discretionary benefit stipend giving people the ability to spend where it matters most

• Free alphorn lessons

These benefits are further detailed in Sierra's policies, may vary by region, and are subject to change at any time, consistent with the terms of any applicable compensation or benefits plans. Eligible full-time employees can participate in Sierra's equity plans subject to the terms of the applicable plans and policies.

Be you, with us

We're working to bring the transformative power of AI to every organization in the world. To do so, it is important to us that the diversity of our employees represents the diversity of our customers. We believe that our work and culture are better when we encourage, support, and respect different skills and experiences represented within our team. We encourage you to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description. We strive to evaluate all applicants consistently without regard to race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, pregnancy, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other legally protected class.