Manager, AI Engineering

SandboxAQ; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

SandboxAQ in the United States (remote) seeks a hands‑on Manager, AI Engineering to help build agentic collaboration, trust and ROI. You will lead a small team, ship production features, and shape the direction of agentic AI within our platform.

You will translate AI research into practical software, mentor engineers, and maintain a high standard of quality while collaborating with Product and Research to release impactful capabilities.

Qualifications

• BSc in Computer Science or related field.
• Deep expertise in AI/ML, software engineering, or AI security.
• Strong Python skills and familiarity with ML/agentic frameworks.
• End‑to‑end ownership with cross‑functional collaboration.
• Ability to learn new languages and ship scalable software.
• Hands‑on experience with agent orchestration, guardrails, or related areas.
• Experience in open source contributions and startup environments.
• Cybersecurity experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a small, highly technical team while staying hands‑on in engineering and research.
• Set technical direction, break down complex problems, and foster ownership and high standards.
• Create agentic capabilities, monitoring, guardrailing, and evaluation frameworks.
• Perform ML tasks: data analysis, feature engineering, model fine‑tuning and prototyping.
• Collaborate with Product and Research to translate AI research into production features.
• Contribute production‑ready code and designs across teams for scalable software.

Skills

Python

AI/ML

Software engineering

Agentic frameworks

Cross‑functional collaboration

Open source

Education

BSc in Computer Science or related field

PhD in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Manager, AI Engineering at SandboxAQ, United States (remote). A mid-level full time position in the Cybersecurity team, listed under software engineering.

The Opportunity

The SandboxAQ AI team is looking for a hands‑on Manager, AI Engineering to help us build the future of agentic collaboration, trust and ROI. Our goal is to make agents work well on their own, in teams, and with humans. This includes the following aspects:

• Security: Discovery of agents, evaluation, red teaming, monitoring, guardrails, etc.
• Quality: Measuring ROI of agents and suggesting improvements
• Collaboration: Bringing humans and agents together into one place with shared context

A successful candidate thrives at the intersection of AI and software engineering. You deeply understand how models and agents work, how they can fail, how they can be protected and improved. You have hands‑on experience with agents in production, know what works and what doesn’t, know the latest trends and you’re opinionated about the future. You know what you don’t know and enjoy learning to close those gaps. You’ll turn your insights and innovation into real world features baked into our platform - shipping code to production.

This is a hands‑on leadership role where you’ll break things, fix them and then harden them for good while also leading a small team of engineers. At the same time, you’ll have freedom to explore, collaborate, publish, and deploy, shaping the field of agentic collaboration and trust from all angles. You will help set technical direction, raise the quality bar, mentor team members, and ensure that the team moves quickly from research insight to real‑world product impact.

We’re looking for somebody with the curiosity of a researcher, the rigor of an engineer, and the creativity of a hacker. You will be part of a diverse team consisting of ML experts, security experts, mathematicians, and software engineers, each playing a key role in efficient and effective enablement of the cutting‑edge technologies being developed at SandboxAQ.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a small, highly technical team while remaining deeply involved in hands‑on engineering and research.
• Set technical direction, break down ambiguous problems, establish practical plans for fast, high‑quality execution, and build a culture of ownership, low‑ego collaboration, thoughtful experimentation, and high standards.
• Create new agentic capabilities, including frameworks for monitoring, guardrailing, and evaluating agents, while staying current on the latest agentic developments and identifying new opportunities.
• Perform classical ML tasks, including exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, and model fine‑tuning, and rapidly iterate on prototypes and features based on feedback and evolving product needs.
• Work closely with Product and Research to translate AI research into applicable features and software engineering projects.
• Contribute production‑ready code and technical designs, working across engineering to deliver scalable, reliable software.

Requirements

• BSc in Computer Science or related field with exposure to AI/ML.
• Deep expertise in AI/ML, software engineering, or AI security.
• Strong programming skills in Python, and relevant ML and/or agentic frameworks.
• Demonstrated ability to work cross‑functionally and collaboratively with a high degree of end‑to‑end ownership, delivering real world outcomes.
• Ability to pick up other programming languages and technologies as required to ship scalable and reliable software.
• PhD in Computer Science or related field with focus on AI/ML or similar.
• Hands‑on experience with at least one of the following: agent orchestration, agent harnesses, agent teams, jailbreaking / prompt injection, red teaming, data poisoning or evasion attacks, secure model deployment or sandboxing, detection and monitoring for AI misuse.
• Experience contributing to open source projects.
• Experience in a fast‑paced startup environment.
• Experience in cybersecurity is a plus, but not essential.