Head of Engineering

david-ai; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Top-notch health, dental, and vision coverage

401k access

Meals 2x daily

Unlimited company-sponsored Barry’s classes

Job summary

A leading audio data research firm in San Francisco is seeking a Head of Engineering to lead technical execution across various teams. This strategic role involves designing core tools for data processing and mentoring the engineering team. Ideal candidates should have at least 3 years of management experience and a strong technical background in distributed systems. The position offers competitive benefits including unlimited PTO and extensive health coverage.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of engineering management experience.
• Experience leading technical organizations in high-growth environments.
• Comfort digging into systems with complex technology stacks.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of tools for audio data.
• Hire and mentor the engineering team.
• Oversee delivery of full-stack features.

Skills

Engineering management experience

Distributed systems

Real-time data processing

Machine learning infrastructure

Problem solving

Tools

Next.js

TypeScript

TailwindCSS

Node.js

PostgreSQL

AWS

Trigger.dev

WebRTC

FFmpeg

Job description

About David AI

David AI is the first audio data research company. We bring an R&D approach to data–developing datasets with the same rigor AI labs bring to models. Our mission is to bring AI into the real world, and we believe audio is the gateway. Speech is versatile, accessible, and human—it fits naturally into everyday life. As audio AI advances and new use cases emerge, high-quality training data is the bottleneck. This is where David AI comes in.

David AI was founded in 2024 by a team of former Scale AI engineers and operators. In less than a year, we’ve brought on most FAANG companies and AI labs as customers. We recently raised a $50M Series B from Meritech, NVIDIA, Jack Altman (Alt Capital), Amplify Partners, First Round Capital and other Tier 1 investors.

Our team is sharp, humble, ambitious, and tight-knit. We’re looking for the best research, engineering, product, and operations minds to join us on our mission to push the frontier of audio AI.

About our Engineering team

At David AI, our engineers build the pipelines, platforms, and models that transform raw audio into high-signal data for leading AI labs and enterprises. We\'re a tight-knit team of product engineers, infrastructure specialists, and machine learning experts focused on building the world’s first audio data research company.

We move fast, own our work end-to-end, and ship to production daily. Our team designs real-time pipelines handling terabytes of speech data and deploys cutting-edge generative audio models.

About this role

As Head of Engineering, you\'ll be the technical backbone for our engineering team, leading execution across product, infrastructure, and AI systems. Partnering closely with the CTO, you\'ll co-develop the long-term technical vision and architecture, then translate it into a clear roadmap and operating cadence. You\'ll ensure delivery quality and nurture a collaborative, high-velocity engineering culture. This is a strategic role with broad autonomy where you\'ll shape how we build from day one.

In this role, you will

• Lead the design and development of core tools that help users make sense of audio data for model training, working closely with researchers to continually improve how we collect data.

• Hire, structure, and mentor the engineering team while setting and upholding high performance standards.

• Oversee the delivery of full-stack features that thousands of users interact with daily.
  Build scalable data processing pipelines to extract actionable insights from terabytes of audio data every day.

• Rapidly iterate on research hypotheses in partnership with the Head of Research and Head of Operations - deploying interfaces to collect new data efficiently.

Your background looks like

• 3+ years of engineering management experience.

• Experience leading technical organizations through rapid growth phases at high-growth startups or scale-ups.

• Strong background in distributed systems, real-time data processing, or machine learning infrastructure.

• A high degree of comfort digging into systems with deep technology stacks.

• A passion for problem solving and providing technical leadership to peers.

Bonus points if you

• Are a former founder.

Some technologies we work with

• Next.js, TypeScript, TailwindCSS, Node.js, tRPC, PostgreSQL, AWS, Trigger.dev, WebRTC, FFmpeg.

Benefits

• Unlimited PTO.

• Top-notch health, dental, and vision coverage with 100% coverage for most plans.

• FSA & HSA access.

• 401k access.

• Meals 2x daily through DoorDash + snacks and beverages available at the office.

• Unlimited company-sponsored Barry’s classes.