Founding Engineering Lead

Openkrill; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 400,000; Full time

Job summary

Openkrill seeks an experienced engineering leader to guide an early-stage SaaS team building applied AI products for enterprise software. You will partner with the tech leadership on architecture, product direction, and ML strategy while leading a small engineering pod and remaining hands-on with critical work.

You will manage a pod of 3–4 engineers, own platform architecture, set engineering standards, and drive build-versus-buy decisions with direct impact on product and revenue.

Qualifications

• 5–8 years of engineering experience, with 4–5 years for exceptional candidates.
• Experience training and deploying ML models in production beyond API integrations.
• End-to-end ownership of technical architecture and build-versus-buy tradeoffs.

Responsibilities

• Lead a pod of 3–4 engineers, supporting growth and shipping key work.
• Own platform architecture and infra decisions with product and revenue impact.
• Set engineering standards for AI-assisted development, review criteria, and release cadence.
• Lead technical designs and initial implementations for new initiatives.

Skills

Team leadership

ML model deployment

Architectural design

AI tooling & agents

Code-enabled leadership

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud platforms

ML frameworks

Job description

ABOUT THE ROLE

Lead engineering for an early-stage SaaS team building applied AI products for enterprise software. You will partner with the technical leadership team on architecture, product direction, and machine learning strategy while leading a small engineering pod and remaining hands-on with critical work.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Build and lead a pod of three to four engineers, supporting their growth, performance, and hiring while shipping key work yourself.
• Own platform architecture and make build-versus-buy and infrastructure decisions with product and revenue impact.
• Set engineering standards for AI-assisted development, including review criteria, definition of done, release cadence, and on-call practices.
• Lead technical designs and initial implementations for new initiatives.
• Evaluate applied ML research and determine which techniques are suitable for production systems.
• Partner with technical leadership to shape the product roadmap, model strategy, and ML approach.
• Initially spend most of your time building, with the balance focused on team leadership.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• Typically 5 to 8 years of engineering experience, with 4 to 5 years considered for exceptional candidates.
• Experience training and deploying machine learning models in production, beyond integrating LLM APIs.
• End-to-end ownership of technical architecture, infrastructure decisions, and build-versus-buy tradeoffs.
• Experience setting engineering standards and leading or managing engineers while continuing to code.
• Strong applied ML judgment across classical methods and newer approaches, including transformers and agent applications.
• Recent experience personally shipping production software, comfort with ambiguity and inherited code, and effective use of AI coding agents.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

Annual salary range: $200,000 to $400,000 USD. Visa sponsorship is not available.

LOCATION

On-site in New York City, United States.