Team Lead, Windows Sandboxes

Recruiting from Scratch; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Opportunity to shape serverless WIndow

Job summary

Recruiting from Scratch is partnering with a rapidly growing infrastructure company to build a Windows sandbox platform for AI agents. You will own the architecture and delivery of the Windows sandbox runtime, building on a KVM/QEMU stack with fast boot and multi-tenant isolation.

You will lead a small pod of senior engineers, contribute code, and shape the long-term technical direction, reporting directly to the CTO in a hands-on, player-coach capacity.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of systems, infrastructure, virtualization, or platform engineering experience.
• 2+ years of leadership of production systems teams.
• Deep experience with Windows infrastructure at scale outside of Microsoft-native environments.
• Hands-on experience running Windows guests using KVM/QEMU.
• Strong systems programming ability with Go, Rust, C, or C++, or significant C#/PowerShell expertise.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and delivery of the company's Windows sandbox runtime.
• Build and operate Windows guest environments on top of a KVM-based virtualization stack.
• Design infrastructure for snapshotting, pausing, restoring, and forking Windows VMs.
• Lead a pod of senior engineers while continuing to ship production code.

Skills

KVM/QEMU

Windows internals

PowerShell

Go

Rust

C/C++

Leadership

Multi-tenant infra

Licensing knowledge

Tools

QEMU

KVM

Automation tooling

Job description

Recruiting from Scratch is a specialized talent firm dedicated to helping companies build exceptional teams. We partner closely with our clients to deeply understand their needs, then connect them with top-tier candidates who are not only highly skilled but also the right fit for the company’s culture and vision. Our mission is simple: place the best people in the right roles to drive long-term success for both clients and candidates.

Title of the Role: Team Lead, Windows Sandboxes

Company Stage of Funding: Series A

Office Type: In Person

Company Description

We're representing a rapidly growing infrastructure company building the compute layer for AI agents. Its platform provides secure, isolated, instantly available sandboxes where AI agents can execute code, interact with computers, and run training workloads.

Following its Series A, the company has already grown 10x and is now expanding its infrastructure to support AI agents that need access to real Windows desktop environments. The team is tackling a largely unsolved infrastructure challenge: making isolated Windows virtual machines behave like serverless compute, with fast startup, snapshotting, pausing, forking, and efficient multi-tenant operation.

This is a deeply technical player-coach opportunity for an experienced infrastructure engineer to lead the Windows sandbox platform while remaining highly hands-on with the underlying systems.

What You Will Do

• Own the architecture and delivery of the company's Windows sandbox runtime.
• Build and operate Windows guest environments on top of a KVM-based virtualization stack.
• Optimize Windows VM boot, provisioning, and login times to create an instant-start sandbox experience.
• Design infrastructure supporting snapshotting, pausing, restoring, and forking Windows virtual machines.
• Build scalable Windows image pipelines, including Sysprep and automated provisioning.
• Own virtio and driver integration across Windows guest environments.
• Develop reliable display and input streaming infrastructure for computer-use AI agents.
• Build automation around Windows services, registry configuration, WinRM, PowerShell, and unattended provisioning.
• Design a licensing-compliant architecture for multi-tenant Windows infrastructure while partnering with legal and finance on SPLA and BYOL requirements.
• Optimize sandbox density, infrastructure utilization, reliability, and cost per workload.
• Lead a small pod of senior infrastructure engineers while continuing to ship production code yourself.
• Hire, mentor, and unblock engineers while establishing the team's technical direction and engineering standards.
• Partner with Product on roadmap priorities and enterprise customer commitments.
• Own the production outcomes and long-term evolution of the Windows sandbox platform.

Ideal Background

• 8+ years of professional systems, infrastructure, virtualization, or platform engineering experience.
• 2+ years of experience leading engineers responsible for production systems.
• Deep experience operating Windows infrastructure at scale outside of primarily Microsoft-native environments.
• Hands-on experience running Windows guests using KVM/QEMU.
• Strong experience with virtio drivers and Windows VM image automation.
• Deep understanding of Windows internals, including the boot process, services, registry, and system configuration.
• Experience automating Windows infrastructure using PowerShell, WinRM, unattended provisioning, or similar technologies.
• Strong systems programming ability with Go, Rust, C, or C++, or significant C#/PowerShell expertise combined with a systems programming language.
• Experience designing reliable, multi-tenant infrastructure with strong isolation requirements.
• Comfortable acting as a player-coach—leading a team while spending most of your time building alongside them.
• Pragmatic understanding of how technical, operational, and licensing constraints affect infrastructure architecture.
• High ownership mindset with the ability to take infrastructure from architecture through production operations.

Preferred

• Background working on systems comparable to Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, or large-scale remote workstation platforms.
• Experience with game streaming or other low-latency remote desktop technologies.
• Experience running GPU-accelerated Windows virtual machines.
• Deep familiarity with remote display protocols such as RDP or SPICE.
• Experience building custom video, display, or input streaming infrastructure.
• Familiarity with Windows SPLA, BYOL, or other licensing models relevant to multi-tenant cloud infrastructure.
• Experience optimizing VM density, cold-start performance, and infrastructure unit economics.
• Experience supporting AI computer-use agents or desktop automation systems.
• Background at a virtualization, cloud infrastructure, serverless compute, VDI, or hyperscaler infrastructure organization.

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive base salary plus equity.
• Full-time position reporting directly to the CTO.
• Location options in San Francisco or Croatia.
• Lead an initial pod of two senior engineers alongside a dedicated Product Manager.
• Player-coach structure where hands-on engineering remains the majority of the role.
• Opportunity to build a novel serverless Windows infrastructure platform specifically designed for AI agents.
• Join shortly after the company's Series A during a period of rapid growth, with the platform already having grown approximately 10x.
• Significant ownership over architecture, reliability, infrastructure economics, licensing strategy, team development, and the long-term technical direction of the Windows sandbox platform.