Principal Engineer, Client Delivery

Vertice Labs; United States; Remote; USD 225,000 - 275,000; Full time

Job summary

Vertice Labs is seeking an experienced technical leader to drive client engagements from discovery to production. You’ll work with strategists and designers, make architecture calls, and lead engineers, using AI agents to boost coding velocity and quality.

You will own technical conversations about scope, risk, and tradeoffs, and operate across frontend, backend, data, and cloud infrastructure. This role is US-based, fully remote, with significant ownership and impact.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to lead technical engagements from discovery to launch (scenario-driven).
• Strong architectural judgment across frontend, backend, data, and cloud.
• Ability to explain tradeoffs to CFOs and engineers alike.
• Experience with AI coding agents and production-ready workflows.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical side of client engagements from discovery through launch.
• Define feasible solutions, costs, and prioritization with the client and team.
• Make architecture calls and write real code, leveraging AI agents.
• Guide engineers on engagements and set standards for AI collaboration.
• Own technical conversations about scope, risk, and tradeoffs with clients.

Skills

Leadership

Architectural design

Communication

AI tooling

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Terraform

Job description

Our clients bring us messy business problems and expect working software in weeks. You're the technical lead who gets them there.

You'll work alongside our strategists and designers in discovery, then turn what the team learns into an architecture, a plan, and a product. You build with a small team of engineers and AI coding agents, and you know how to get far more out of those tools than most teams do.

Most people who fit have held a Director, Senior Director, VP, or CTO title. They know a lot about a lot, they still build, and they'd rather ship than manage a process.

Vertice Labs builds custom software and AI-native operations for founders, operators, and established companies. Small senior US-based teams of strategists, designers, and engineers. No offshore, no subcontracting. The people on the call are the people doing the work.

What you'll actually do

• Lead the technical side of client engagements, from discovery through launch
• Work with our strategists and designers to find the problem behind the one the client named, and say what's feasible, what it costs, and what to build first
• Make the architecture calls and write real code, with AI agents doing much of the typing
• Lead the engineers on your engagement and set the bar for how they work with AI
• Own the technical conversations with the client, including the hard ones about scope, risk, and tradeoffs

What we require, and how we'll check it

Engineering judgment and people judgment in the same person.

You can explain a tradeoff to a CFO in two sentences and to a staff engineer in twenty minutes. You notice when the person nodding on the call doesn't agree. Clients, designers, and engineers all ask to work with you again. Come with examples, because we'll ask for them.

Delivery ownership.

You've been the accountable technical lead on a project from first conversation to production, more than once, as part of a cross-functional team. We'll pick one and go five layers deep: the architecture, what you gave up, what broke, and what still bugs you.

Architecture across the whole system.

You've designed systems that span frontend, backend, data, and cloud infrastructure, and you can defend the tradeoffs.

Real leverage from AI tools.

You use coding agents every day and know where they help and where they need checking. In the interview you'll screen-share your real setup and take a change end to end. We'll watch how you check what the agents produce.

12+ years building software

with the recent ones spent as the technical backbone and the person in the room.

Nice to have

• Consulting, agency, or other client-services background
• Production LLM, retrieval, or agent systems with real users
• AWS/Azure/GCP and Terraform

What this role is not

• Not a hands-off management seat. You lead the technical work and you still build.
• Not a solo seat. You work with strategists, designers, and engineers, and you make them better.
• Not a specialist seat. You own the technical outcome across the whole stack.
• Not a big-company role. Small teams, real ownership, no process for its own sake.

Compensation and location

$225,000 to $275,000 base, depending on experience. US-based, fully remote.