Engineering Manager, Platform

AI Chopping Block; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Compensation (competitive base)

Health Insurance

Parental Leave

401(k)

Commuter Allowance

Flexible PTO

Meals & Snacks

Your own personal Yoshi

Job summary

Cartesia is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a core engineering team in San Francisco. You will hire, coach, and grow a 7+ person team, own its technical direction, and stay hands-on when it matters.

This role emphasizes architecture leadership, production reliability, and cross-functional collaboration with Product and Research to deliver high-impact AI infrastructure. The ideal candidate has a track record of delivering complex projects in fast-paced environments, strong technical depth,

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading engineering teams and developing people.
• Strong technical depth with ability to discuss architecture and decisions.
• Track record delivering complex projects in fast-moving environments.
• Owns priorities, makes trade-offs, and balances execution with long-term work.
• Experience building large-scale distributed systems with reliability and observability.
• Excellent cross-functional leadership to align stakeholders on technical direction.
• Bonus: experience scaling teams through growth and changes.
• Bonus: background in machine learning, AI infrastructure, or generative models.

Responsibilities

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing engineering team through hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.
• Own your team's roadmap, decisions, and outcomes, setting clear priorities and driving a high shipping cadence.
• Provide technical leadership across architecture, design reviews, complex problems, and production incidents.
• Develop a deep understanding of your team's systems and tradeoffs to challenge assumptions and unblock the team.
• Partner with Product, Research, and other teams to set direction and deliver against company priorities.
• Ensure systems scale ahead of the business while maintaining performance, reliability, and quality.

Job description

About Cartesia

Our mission is to architect AI that learns from and interacts with the world like humans do.

We're pioneering the model architectures that will make this possible. Our founding team met as PhDs at the Stanford AI Lab, where we invented State Space Models or SSMs, a new primitive for training efficient, large-scale foundation models. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering paired with a design-minded product engineering team to build and ship cutting edge models and experiences.

We're funded by leading investors at Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Factory, Conviction, A Star, General Catalyst, SV Angel, Databricks and others. We're fortunate to have the support of many amazing advisors, and 90+ angels across many industries, including the world's foremost experts in AI.

About the Role

We're hiring an Engineering Manager to lead one of Cartesia's core engineering teams as a hands-on technical and people leader. You'll build and grow a team of 7+ engineers, own its technical direction and execution, and stay close enough to the work to provide meaningful technical leadership when it matters.

Your Impact

• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing engineering team through hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.

• Own your team's roadmap, decisions, and outcomes, setting clear priorities and driving a high and predictable shipping cadence.

• Provide technical leadership across architecture, design reviews, complex technical problems, and production incidents.

• Develop a deep understanding of your team's systems and technical tradeoffs so you can challenge assumptions, make sound decisions, and unblock the team.

• Partner closely with Product, Research, and other teams to set direction and deliver against company priorities.

• Ensure the systems your team owns scale ahead of the business while maintaining a high bar for performance, reliability, and engineering quality.

What You Bring

Given the scale and difficulty of problems we work on, we value managers who combine exceptional people leadership with strong technical judgment.

• Experience managing and developing high-performing engineering teams, including coaching, performance management, and career growth.

• Strong technical depth and engineering judgment, with the ability to earn credibility with experienced engineers and engage deeply in architecture and technical decisions.

• A track record of leading teams to deliver complex technical projects in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.

• Strong ownership and prioritization skills, with the ability to make difficult tradeoffs and balance near-term execution with longer-term investments.

• Experience building large-scale distributed systems with high demands on performance, reliability, and observability.

• Strong cross-functional leadership and the ability to align stakeholders around technical decisions and priorities.

• [bonus] Experience building or scaling engineering teams through periods of rapid growth or organizational change.

• [bonus] Background in machine learning, AI infrastructure, or generative models.

Note: Cartesia participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information to confirm employment eligibility after hire.

More Details

In-office policy: We’re an in-person team based out of offices in San Francisco, London and Bangalore. We love being in the office, hanging out together, and learning from each other every day.

Visa sponsorship: We provide visa sponsorship support and assess each circumstance on a case-by-case basis. However, visa sponsorship is dependent on many factors, including the role you are applying for, and the location you are going to be based, and so we can’t always guarantee success. Your Recruiter will work with you to understand your visa sponsorship needs from the first call.

We ship fast. All of our work is novel and cutting edge, and execution speed is paramount. We have a high bar, and we don’t sacrifice quality or design along the way.

We support each other. We have an open & inclusive culture that’s focused on giving everyone the resources they need to succeed.

Our Benefits (US Employees Only)

Compensation Competitive base salary alongside attractive equity package.

Health Insurance Fully covered medical insurance along with dental and vision for you and your family.

Parental Leave 9 weeks paternity & 12 weeks maternity leave

401(k)

Commuter Allowance A monthly stipend to help you get to and from the office.

Flexible PTO Take as much time as you need to recharge your batteries.

Meals & Snacks Lunch, dinner and plenty of snacks, provided daily.

Your own personal Yoshi

Our Commitment to Equal Opportunity

Cartesia is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status.