Founding Engineering Manager

People Culture Talent; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

People Culture Talent is seeking a Founding Engineering Manager for a venture-backed AI infrastructure company in San Francisco. This pivotal role involves significant collaboration with founders and a founding engineering team comprised of veterans from Google and AWS.

The successful candidate will mentor engineers, facilitate team scaling, and own technical execution with a strong focus on quality and strategy. An exceptional opportunity to impact a high-growth environment, fostering both ownership and accountability.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• 2+ years managing engineering teams in a startup or high-growth environment.
• Track record of shipping complex technical work.

Responsibilities

• Mentor and develop a high retention team of engineers.
• Partner with founders on hiring and onboarding.
• Own planning and delivery across multiple initiatives.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Managing engineering teams

Technical judgment

Excellent written communication

Customer-centric instinct

Job description

Note: We are recruiting on behalf of our valued client. This opportunity is for a position with their organization, not with People Culture Talent. We're excited to help connect talented professionals with this exceptional team!

The Role

We're looking for a Founding Engineering Manager to join a Series A AI infrastructure company at a pivotal moment. You'll work directly with the founders and a founding engineering team that came up through Google, Meta, Cruise, and AWS. This team writes its own feature docs, owns customer support rotations, and holds craft as a non‑negotiable value. The people here haven't left. There is high retention, high trust, and this person's job will be to protect that culture while scaling it.

This is a hands‑on role. You'll be close to the technical work, close to the people doing it, and close to the decisions that shape how the team grows.

What You’ll Own

• Engineering Leadership — Mentor and develop a high retention team of engineers. Build the conditions where strong people do their best work and stay.
• Team Scaling — Partner with founders on hiring, onboarding, and career development as the engineering org grows beyond its founding core.
• Technical Execution — Own planning and delivery across multiple initiatives. Hold the bar on quality and system design without slowing the team down.
• Cross‑Functional Collaboration — Connect engineering to product and customer needs. Make sure the team is building the right things, not just building things well.
• Process & Ops — Build operating rhythms that actually help — lightweight and practical for a team that doesn't need heavy process to produce.
• Technical Strategy — Contribute to architectural decisions and long‑term platform investments that support scale without accumulating debt.
• Customer Impact — Stay close to customer‑facing engineers. Understand the real world problems the platform is solving and make sure solutions reflect that.

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years managing engineering teams in a startup or high‑growth environment
• A track record of shipping complex technical work and developing the engineers around you
• Strong technical judgment — you can go deep on architecture and system design when it matters
• Experience building engineering culture, not just org charts — ownership, accountability, and craft over process
• Excellent written communication; comfortable in an async‑first environment where decisions are documented and context travels in writing
• A customer‑centric instinct and genuine interest in how the platform performs in production
• Experience with AI‑native products, developer tools, infrastructure platforms, or agent‑based systems is a strong plus
• Nice to Have:
  • Background in developer tooling, APIs, or cloud infrastructure
  • Experience in customer‑facing engineering organizations
  • Early engineering leadership at a startup (first or second management hire)

About Our Client

This venture‑backed AI infrastructure company is developing the connectivity layer that enables AI platforms and B2B software to take meaningful action within the systems businesses rely on. The founding team brings experience from Google, Meta, and AWS. The team is small, retention rates are exceptional, and the technical standards are high. This is an excellent opportunity for professionals who are excited about meaningful ownership and the chance to help shape the future of collaboration between businesses and AI.