Engineering Manager, Frontier AI Infrastructure - Public Sector

Scale AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 214,000 - 267,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Comprehensive benefits

Learning stipend

Job summary

Scale AI's Public Sector team seeks an Engineering Manager to lead the Frontier AI Infrastructure group. This at-scale, hands‑on leadership role combines coding with team growth, focusing on model inference, latency debugging, and secure, scalable backend systems for public sector customers.

You will own hiring and career development, set quarterly priorities, and collaborate with Product to align requirements with the roadmap while engaging with government stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 1–2+ years direct people management leading a team of software engineers (hiring, performance management, and career development).
• Active Secret clearance with ability and willingness to up‑level to TS/SCI with CI Poly.
• Willingness to remain hands‑on in the code; not purely a management role.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of engineers—own hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development.
• Set technical direction and priorities for the inference layer and ensure delivery on contracts.
• Run sprint planning, on‑call rotation, incident reviews, and postmortems.
• Translate customer and mission requirements into roadmap with cross‑functional partners.
• Represent the team in customer engagements and vendor escalations, including with government stakeholders.

Skills

People management

Hands-on coding

Security clearance

Cloud infrastructure

Containerization

Kubernetes

AWS/Azure/GCP

Communication

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Scale AI’s Public Sector business is growing quickly as government agencies adopt AI to support critical national security, defense, and public sector missions. We are seeking a hands‑on Engineering Manager to lead our Frontier AI Infrastructure team within Public Sector Engineering. This is a 50/50 role: you'll spend roughly half your time writing and reviewing code, and half your time leading, coaching, and growing a small team of engineers.

Your team owns the model inference layer — enabling state-of-the art models, debugging the latest AI tools, managing networking, debugging latency, and tracking pricing/usage metrics for AI models. You'll lead technical discussions on the frontlines with cloud vendors and customers to deliver on critical contracts and debug platform issues, and you'll partner upstream with Product to catch issues before they break, moving the team from "infra‑only debugging" to proactive integration testing.

You will:

As a manager - 50/50 management and hands on coding experience.

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of engineers — own hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development.
• Set technical direction and quarterly priorities for the inference layer, and hold the team accountable to delivery on customer and contract commitments.
• Run the operational rhythm of the team: sprint planning, on‑call rotation, incident review, and postmortems.
• Partner with Product, Program, and Deployed Engineering leadership to translate customer and mission requirements into roadmap.
• Represent the team in customer engagements and vendor escalations, including with government stakeholders.
• Design and implement secure, scalable backend systems for Public Sector customers, leveraging Scale's modern cloud‑native AI infrastructure.
• Own services and systems alongside your team, define their long‑term health goals, and improve the health of surrounding components.
• Stay in the code: review PRs, debug production issues, and take on meaningful technical work yourself.

Must have:

• At least 1-2+ years of direct people management experience leading a team of software engineers (hiring, performance management, and career development), plus a strong track record as a hands‑on individual contributor.
• At least an active Secret clearance, and the ability and willingness to up‑level to TS/SCI with CI Poly. This is a requirement and candidates will not be considered who do not hold at least a Secret clearance.
• Willingness to remain hands‑on in the code — this is not a purely people‑leadership role.

Ideally you'd have:

• Full Stack Development: Proficiency in both front‑end and back‑end development, including modern web frameworks, programming languages, and databases. Experience developing and delivering software to air‑gapped and isolated environments is a plus.
• Cloud‑Native Technologies: Understanding of containerization (e.g., Docker) and orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes). Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and experience developing and deploying applications in cloud‑native environments.
• Security Focused: Experience with federal compliance frameworks and requirements (e.g., Cloud SRG, FedRAMP, STIG Benchmarks). Experience delivering software and technical solutions that meet strict security and regulatory requirements.
• Team Building: Experience building or scaling a team from a small size, and setting engineering standards (code review, testing, on‑call) that stick.
• Problem Solving: Strong analytical skills to understand complex challenges and devise effective solutions. Ability to think critically, identify root causes, and propose innovative approaches to technical obstacles.
• Collaboration and Communication: Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to collaborate with cross‑functional teams, stakeholders, and customers. Ability to clearly articulate technical concepts to non‑technical audiences.
• Adaptability and Learning Agility: Willingness to embrace new technologies, learn new skills, and adapt to evolving requirements in a fast‑moving AI landscape.
• Must be able to support work 3–4 days a week from the DC office.

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job‑related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

The base salary range for this full‑time position in the location of Washington DC is:

$213,600—$267,000 USD

PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

About Us:

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high‑quality data and full‑stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst & Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at [e-mail]. Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information.

We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.

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