Engineering Manager - Applied AI

Stem IT; McLean (VA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive equity

Job summary

Stem IT in McLean, VA, is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a team building AI-powered software platforms and scalable ML systems. This hybrid role combines leadership with hands-on engineering in a fast-growing logistics/manufacturing tech startup.

The ideal candidate has 7+ years in software/AI engineering, proven team leadership, strong system design skills, and experience with TS/Node/React/Python/PostgreSQL. Collaboration with product, leadership, and client teams is essential.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional experience in software engineering, AI/ML engineering, platform engineering, or related fields.
• Experience leading engineering teams, mentoring developers, and driving technical projects from design through production.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals including system design, architecture, code quality, and production reliability.
• Experience with LLM evaluation, prompt engineering, model performance measurement, and improving AI output quality.
• Experience designing and evolving scalable software platforms and making architectural decisions.
• Familiarity with modern application technologies such as TypeScript, Node.js, React, Python, and PostgreSQL.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop engineers while staying hands-on in building AI-powered software platforms and scalable ML systems.
• Drive technical execution while collaborating with product, leadership, and customer-facing teams in a startup setting.
• Help shape architecture and coding standards to improve delivery and reliability.

Skills

Team leadership

AI/ML engineering

LLM evaluation

System design

Architecture decisions

TypeScript

Node.js

React

Python

PostgreSQL

CI/CD

Observability

Infrastructure as Code

Distributed systems

Job description

Venture-backed AI technology startup in the logistics and manufacturing space is looking to add an Engineering Manager to its growing team in McLean, Virginia (hybrid). This is an opportunity to lead and develop engineers while remaining hands‑on in building modern AI‑powered software platforms and scalable machine learning systems.

The ideal candidate will bring a strong software engineering background, experience delivering production AI/LLM applications, and the ability to lead technical execution while working alongside product, engineering, leadership, and customer‑facing teams in a collaborative startup environment.

Targeting:

• 7+ years of professional experience in software engineering, AI/ML engineering, platform engineering, or related fields.
• Experience leading engineering teams, mentoring developers, and driving technical projects from design through production.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, architecture, code quality, and production reliability.
• Experience with LLM evaluation, prompt engineering, model performance measurement, and improving AI output quality.
• Experience designing and evolving scalable software platforms and making architectural decisions.
• Familiarity with modern application technologies such as TypeScript, Node.js, React, Python, and PostgreSQL.

Nice to Have:

• Customer facing background, particularly deploying applications at client sites
• Background building document processing, NLP, information extraction, or machine learning pipelines.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures, APIs, event-driven systems, and distributed applications.
• Familiarity with CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, and production monitoring.
• Experience at a venture‑backed startup or high‑growth technology company.
• Background in construction technology, HVAC, IOT, manufacturing, or vertical SaaS.
• Experience scaling engineering teams, establishing development standards, and improving software delivery processes.
• Competitive Compensation Package with strong equity