Engineering Manager — AI Systems & Data Platforms

Kestrel Intelligence; United States; Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Kestrel Intelligence seeks an Engineering Manager to lead a software team delivering data pipelines, APIs, and AI-driven architecture for scalable autonomy across domains. You will hire, mentor, and set delivery priorities while guiding architecture and unblocking the team to meet mission-critical timelines.

You’ll collaborate with product, business development, and leadership to translate customer needs into engineering priorities, enforce best practices, and ensure readiness for GovCloud/DoD

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including at least 2 years of people management.
• Proven track record of leading teams that ship production software on schedule.
• Hands-on Python, API development, distributed systems, and cloud environments (AWS).
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for nontechnical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of software engineers.
• Recruit and hire engineers aligned with mission and culture.
• Plan and manage sprint planning, roadmaps, and delivery milestones.
• Translate customer mission needs into engineering priorities with product and leadership.
• Guide architecture across Python services, data pipelines, and cloud infra.
• Establish engineering best practices: code reviews, testing, CI/CD, docs, incident response.
• Ensure systems support AWS GovCloud and DoD IL deployments.
• Coordinate engineering support for pilots, demos, customer site visits.
• Identify and mitigate technical, schedule, and staffing risks early.
• Track team health and delivery metrics; improve team processes.

Skills

Python

API development

Distributed systems

Cloud environments (AWS)

Communication skills

Engineering leadership

Job description

Kestrel Intelligence seeks an Engineering Manager to lead a software team delivering data pipelines, APIs, and AI-driven architecture for scalable autonomy across domains. You will hire, mentor, and set delivery priorities while guiding architecture and unblocking the team to meet mission-critical timelines.

You’ll collaborate with product, business development, and leadership to translate customer needs into engineering priorities, enforce best practices, and ensure readiness for GovCloud/DoD