Engineering Manager, Frontier AI Infrastructure - Public Sector

Aimlroles; Washington; Hybrid; USD 214,000 - 267,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Retirement benefits

Learning stipend

Generous PTO

commuter stipend

Job summary

Scale AI is hiring an Engineering Manager for the Frontier AI Infrastructure team in Public Sector. The role blends hands-on coding with leadership, spanning hiring, setting direction, and delivering secure backend systems for government customers.

You’ll work in a 50/50 capacity, guiding a small team while staying closely involved in code, architecture, and vendor and customer interactions. A Secret clearance is required.

Qualifications

• Minimum 1–2+ years leading a software engineering team, including hiring and performance management.
• Active Secret clearance required; willingness to upgrade to TS/SCI with CI Poly.
• Role requires hands-on coding alongside leadership responsibilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead and coach a team of engineers; own hiring and career development.
• Set technical direction and quarterly priorities for the inference layer.
• Manage sprint planning, on-call rotations, incident reviews, and postmortems.
• Collaborate with Product, Program, and Deployed Engineering to translate requirements into roadmaps.
• Represent the team in customer engagements and vendor escalations with government stakeholders.
• Design secure, scalable backend systems for Public Sector customers using cloud-native infra.
• Review PRs, debug production issues, and contribute technically as needed.

Skills

People management

Hands-on coding

Secret clearance

Cloud-native technologies

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS/Azure/GCP

CI/CD

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 a50/50 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.

This is a full-time position in Washington DC with a base salary range: $213,600-$267,000 USD.

You\'ll also receive benefits including, but not limited to:

• comprehensive health coverage
• dental coverage
• vision coverage
• retirement benefits
• learning and development stipend
• generous PTO

Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

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.

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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