Founding Head of Engineering, AI

Stealth Startup; New York (NY); On-site; USD 220,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Stealth Startup in New York City is seeking an AI-native engineering leader who still builds. Reporting to the CEO, you will inherit a seven-person distributed team, own architecture and technical quality, and help turn a rapidly growing agentic-services business into a scalable software platform.

You’ll operate across code, product decisions, customer problems, hiring, and long-term technical strategy in a single day.

Qualifications

• Personally built and shipped an AI-native or agentic product used by real customers.
• Hands-on production experience with LLM APIs and agent orchestration.
• Experience leading a distributed engineering team and managing offshore partners.
• Located within commuting distance of NYC and able to work on-site.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical vision and architecture for an agentic AI platform in production.
• Remain hands-on through coding, architecture, code reviews, and core product development.
• Lead a distributed team of two US-based engineers and five offshore developers.
• Build reliable systems for agent orchestration, evaluation, observability, and safeguards.
• Create a tech roadmap balancing experimentation with scalability and quality.
• Recruit, manage, and develop engineers as the company grows.
• Partner with founders on product strategy, customer needs, and hiring.
• Improve development velocity without sacrificing reliability, security, or maintainability.
• Represent technology to customers, investors, partners, and future hires.

Skills

LLM APIs

Agent orchestration

Observability

Retrieval

Tool use

Human-in-the-loop workflows

Production experience

Distributed team leadership

Architectural design

Job description

New York City | Reporting to the CEO | Confidential venture-backed AI company

A rapidly growing, venture-backed AI company is building at the frontier of agentic services. Launched commercially in late 2025, the business is approaching $8 million in revenue and has raised approximately $10 million from leading Silicon Valley investors.

The company combines autonomous AI agents, proprietary technology, and expert human judgment to transform how work is delivered across the $60+ billion advertising industry. Early product-market fit is unusually strong, and the business is entering its next phase of product and organizational scale.

The opportunity

We are looking for an AI-native engineering leader who still builds. Reporting directly to the CEO and co-founder, you will inherit a seven-person distributed development team, personally own architecture and technical quality, and help turn a rapidly growing agentic-services business into a scalable software platform.

You should be comfortable moving between code, product decisions, customer problems, hiring, and long-term technical strategy in the same day. This is not a maintenance, advisory, or coordination role. The successful candidate will operate as a hands-on builder, technical decision-maker, and company leader.

What you’ll own

• Set the technical vision and architecture for an agentic AI platform operating in production.
• Remain meaningfully hands-on through coding, architecture, code review, debugging, and critical product development.
• Lead a distributed team of two US-based engineers and five full-time developers working through an offshore development partner.
• Establish clear accountability, engineering standards, code-review practices, and operating rhythms across the distributed team.
• Build reliable systems for agent orchestration, tool use, evaluation, observability, human review, and production safeguards.
• Create a technical roadmap that balances rapid experimentation with scalability and technical quality.
• Recruit, manage, and develop exceptional engineers as the company grows.
• Determine which technical capabilities should remain with external partners and which should be developed internally.
• Partner closely with the founders across product strategy, customer needs, hiring, and company planning.
• Improve development velocity without sacrificing reliability, security, or maintainability.
• Represent the technology function with customers, investors, partners, and future senior hires.

What we’re looking for

• Personally built and shipped an AI-native or agentic product used by real customers.
• Hands-on production experience with LLM APIs, agent orchestration, evaluations, observability, retrieval, tool use, and human-in-the-loop workflows.
• Meaningful coding, architecture, and code-review involvement within the last two years.
• Experience building a product from 0 to 1 at a venture-backed startup or as an early engineer.
• Significant experience building and scaling production software systems.
• Experience recruiting and leading a high-caliber engineering team while maintaining personal technical credibility.
• Strong product instincts and the ability to connect technical decisions to customer and commercial outcomes.
• Comfort operating with imperfect information, short feedback cycles, and ambitious goals.
• Clear communication, low ego, high ownership, and a strong bias toward action.
• Located within commuting distance of New York City and willing to work on-site regularly.

This role is designed for a builder. Candidates whose recent experience has focused primarily on enterprise transformation, advisory work, program management, or managing large organizations without direct technical involvement are unlikely to be a fit.

Particularly relevant experience

• Engineering experience at a high-bar technology company or elite venture-backed startup.
• A rigorous computer science, computer engineering, or related technical foundation.
• Experience scaling a product through rapid customer and revenue growth.
• Knowledge of the content-creator ecosystem, paid media, advertising technology, or social networks.
• Experience managing distributed developers while progressively building an internal team.
• Public technical work, meaningful open-source contributions, or products you can demonstrate.
• Scaling multi-tenant SaaS infrastructure and integrating numerous third-party platforms and APIs.

Why this opportunity

• Rare commercial traction for a company at this stage.
• Direct ownership of the technology function and engineering culture.
• Close partnership with experienced, commercially driven founders.
• Strong backing from leading Silicon Valley investors.
• The opportunity to reinvent a $60+ billion industry through an AI-native operating model.
• Meaningful equity and the ability to shape the company’s long-term trajectory.

This search is being conducted confidentially. Additional information will be shared with qualified candidates during the initial conversation.