Founding VP of Engineering, ADK

Pelico; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake

Health, Dental, and Vision coverage

Learning budget

Job summary

Pelico is building a pioneering manufacturing orchestration platform and is seeking a founder-level engineering leader to own the technical direction and build a world-class team on the factory floor scale. You will shape multi-agent systems, agent environments, and enterprise integrations for top manufacturers.

You will design and ship core infra, enable agents to operate reliably, and lead senior engineers to deliver high-impact solutions that bridge production plans with real-time execution.

Qualifications

• Built and operated production multi-agent systems: orchestration runtimes, tool and MCP surfaces, agent harnesses, guardrails, model selection.
• Top-tier AI fluency with shipped AI-agent products, observability, regression and drift detection, and cost/latency awareness.

Responsibilities

• Build the platform for agents to author, run, observe, and govern their actions.
• Turn the twin into an environment agents can operate in by reading plans, acting, and propagating consequences across millions of steps.
• Solve the multi-agent coordination problem and prevent conflicting actions.
• Earn enterprise trust by making agent actions reproducible, auditable, and explainable for regulated IT environments.
• Find product-market fit by distinguishing real tech from vision and turning it into demos and enterprise deals.
• Set the bar and hire and grow the engineers who will build this with you.

Skills

Multi-agent systems

AI fluency

Production code ownership

Platform building

Leadership of senior engineers

Job description

About Pelico

Traditional industrial manufacturing systems were built for predictability. Supply chains no longer are. Today, real-time data is buried in legacy tools that weren't designed for constant disruption. By the time an issue surfaces, it has already snowballed, sending everyone into firefighting mode. Pelico exists to close the gap between production plans and the daily reality on the factory floor.

We've built the manufacturing orchestration platform trusted by the world's most complex industrial operations : companies like Airbus, Boeing, Safran, Eaton, and Cartier. Our AI connects fragmented supply chain, production, and quality data into a single live operational picture — then puts AI agents to work anticipating disruptions, simulating recovery options, and keeping every team aligned before small problems become expensive ones.

Founded in 2019 and backed by General Catalyst, 83North, and Serena, we've raised $72M and are growing fast — 300% year-over-year revenue growth, deployed in 15+ countries, and supporting factories worldwide. We're headquartered in Paris, with offices in Miami, London and Amsterdam, and we're just getting started.

This is a rare chance to join a company that's redefining an industry that hasn't been disrupted in decades — from the inside.

About the Role

Companies have multiple founding moments and Pelico is going through a new one.

This is a founding seat on a new product with the ownership to match. You set the technical direction, make the calls that matter, and build the team around you. It is one of the most important things we are building, and it would be yours to lead.

You benefit from company assets (data, events dependency graphs, simulation engine, next best action algorithms, etc) and customer reach as Pelico works and manages operational data of multiple leading manufacturers.

What You'll do

• Build the platform. Design and ship the system manufacturers use to author, run, observe, and govern their agents: the canvas, the tool catalogue, model selection, the full loop. You start from real foundations, not a blank page.

• Turn the twin into an environment agents can operate in. Open up the deterministic engine so an agent can read the plan, take an action, watch the consequences propagate across millions of connected steps, and be scored on what happened to the whole factory.

• Solve the multi-agent problem. Measure each agent's true contribution, and prevent agents from undoing one another's work. This is unsolved territory, and it sits at the core of the moat.

• Earn the enterprise's trust. Make every agent action reproducible, auditable, and explainable to the bar a regulated aerospace and defense IT department will accept, with humans in the loop where it counts.

• Find product-market fit. Draw the line between what is real today and what is still vision, decide what belongs in the platform versus a single product, and turn it into a demo and a commercial story that wins enterprise deals.

• Set the bar and build the team. Write the specs and the production code, build with fleets of AI coding agents, and hire and grow the engineers who will build this with you.

About You

• You have built and operated production multi-agent systems: orchestration runtimes, tool and MCP surfaces, agent harnesses, guardrails, model selection.

• You have taken an early product from its first design-partner customer to real revenue in a demanding or regulated industry (aerospace, defense, finance, healthcare), owning both the trust bar and the path from demo to signed deal.

• Top-tier AI fluency you can show, not just claim. You've shipped AI-agent products with real eval and observability discipline (regression and drift detection, cost and latency budgets), you build with fleets of AI coding agents every day, and you have judgment on what to automate and what to keep human.

• You still write and review production code daily, and you lead senior engineers by being one of the best in the room.

• You have a platform builder's instinct: turning an internal engine into a clean surface other teams build on.

Nice to have:

• Supply chain, discrete manufacturing, or operations (planning, parts shortages, inventory).

• Enough optimization or operations-research literacy to work closely with an OR team. You don't need to be the OR scientist; that depth is already here.

• Aerospace, defense, or other regulated-industry experience (for example ITAR).

Why Pelico

If you want the hardest problem and the most ownership we have to offer, this is the seat. What comes with it:

• A true founder mandate: real ownership, meaningful equity, and the room to build the platform and the team on your terms.

• The highest-stakes seat here. You build it for customers like Airbus and Safran, at the scale of their global operations, and the moat is something competitors cannot copy: we own both the factory simulation and the scoreboard that says whether an agent actually helped.

• A small, elite, AI-native engineering team. Be challenged, learn, and ship fast.

• Competitive salary benchmarked to your market, plus health, dental, and vision coverage and a learning budget.

Pelico is an equal opportunity employer. We're committed to building a diverse team and an inclusive environment where everyone can do their best work.