Senior Manager, Full-Stack AI Engineering

Harnham; Houston (TX); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Harnham in the United States seeks a Senior Manager, Full-Stack AI Engineering to lead a small team delivering AI-powered software. This is a highly hands-on leadership role, with most time spent contributing to architecture, development, and delivery while also mentoring engineers.

The ideal candidate has a strong full-stack background and thrives in production AI environments, including LLMs, retrieval-augmented systems, and agent-like workflows.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical discipline.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with substantial full-stack development.
• 5+ years of engineering leadership or people management experience.
• Experience hiring, mentoring, and developing software engineering talent.
• Strong experience with modern full-stack technologies: React/Angular, Java, Python, Go, FastAPI/Django/Flask.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and deployment of production-grade AI-enabled applications.
• Contribute to coding, architecture, and technical delivery across initiatives.
• Build and support end-to-end solutions spanning frontend, backend, APIs, data pipelines, and AI features.
• Provide technical direction on AI integration, cloud-native solutions, and best practices.
• Conduct architecture/code reviews and ensure security, scalability, and reliability.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

AI integration

Leadership

React/Angular

Java/Python

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/SE

Tools

FastAPI

Django/Flask

Cloud platforms (AWS)

Job description

4 days/week on-site in Houston or Austin

Senior Manager, Full-Stack AI Engineering

$190,000-$210,000

A growing technology-driven organisation is seeking a Senior Manager, Full-Stack AI Engineering to lead a small team of engineers delivering AI-powered software solutions. This is a highly hands-on leadership position, with the majority of time spent contributing directly to architecture, development, and delivery while also managing and developing engineers.

The ideal candidate brings a strong full-stack engineering background and has successfully transitioned into AI-focused application development. This individual should have practical experience deploying large language model (LLM) solutions, generative AI capabilities, retrieval-augmented systems, agent-based architectures, and AI-assisted software development workflows in production environments.

This role partners closely with product, data, and AI stakeholders to deliver enterprise-scale applications while establishing engineering excellence across the team.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Delivery

• Lead the design, development, and deployment of production-grade AI-enabled applications.
• Contribute directly to coding, architecture, solution design, and technical delivery across multiple initiatives.
• Build and support end-to-end solutions spanning frontend applications, backend services, APIs, data integration pipelines, and AI-powered features.
• Provide technical direction on AI integration patterns, system architecture, cloud-native solutions, and software engineering best practices.
• Conduct architecture reviews, code reviews, and technical design discussions.
• Ensure scalability, maintainability, security, and operational excellence across delivered solutions.

Team Management

• Manage and mentor a team of software engineers across multiple workstreams.
• Conduct performance reviews, regular coaching sessions, and career development planning.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous learning, and delivery excellence.
• Participate in hiring, onboarding, and talent development activities.

Engineering Standards & Quality

• Establish and enforce standards for coding, testing, documentation, security, and release management.
• Promote responsible use of AI-assisted development tools and establish best practices for their adoption.
• Evaluate emerging engineering and AI development tools to improve team effectiveness and software quality.
• Ensure AI-generated code meets the same standards as manually authored code.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with product leaders, data teams, AI specialists, and business stakeholders to prioritise and deliver solutions.
• Communicate technical risks, dependencies, and delivery expectations effectively.
• Contribute to planning, estimation, and process improvement initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with substantial full-stack development expertise.
• 5+ years of engineering leadership or people management experience.
• Demonstrated experience hiring, mentoring, and developing software engineering talent.
• Strong experience with modern full-stack technologies, including:
  • Frontend frameworks such as React or Angular.
  • Backend development using Java, Python, Go, or similar languages.
  • Python frameworks such as FastAPI, Django, or Flask.
• Experience delivering AI-enabled or data-intensive applications in production environments.
• Practical experience integrating LLMs, generative AI solutions, AI workflows, or related technologies into software products.
• Experience defining engineering standards covering code quality, testing, documentation, and security.
• Experience implementing and governing AI-assisted coding workflows using tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Augment Code, or comparable platforms.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD, cloud-native architectures, deployment automation, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Experience managing multiple projects or delivery workstreams simultaneously.
• Ability to assess architecture quality, coding standards, technical complexity, and delivery risk.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building production solutions using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agent-based AI frameworks, and LLM-powered applications.
• Experience with modern cloud platforms, particularly AWS.
• Experience working with large-scale data platforms, lakehouse environments, or analytics ecosystems.
• Experience partnering with data scientists, ML engineers, and product teams in agile delivery environments.
• Prior experience in startup, scale-up, or small-to-mid-sized engineering environments.
• Background leading highly technical teams while remaining an active individual contributor.

Work Model / Location / Engagement Details

• Full-time permanent position.
• Remote-flexible within commuting distance of a major office location in the Southern United States.
• Candidates must reside within approximately 50 miles of the designated office region.
• In-office attendance required approximately 4 days per month.
• Occasional travel expected (approximately 20% to 30%).
• Compensation up to $210,000 base salary plus target bonus of 25%.