Technical Lead Manager, AI

Ironclad; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 245,000 - 295,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage

Parental leave

401(k) with company match

Wellbeing stipends

Job summary

Ironclad in San Francisco is seeking a Technical Lead Manager for Jurist, its AI-native contract review product. You’ll shape the technical direction, own end-to-end architecture, and lead a team across frontend and backend to deliver reliable, explainable AI experiences.

You will partner with Product, Design, Legal experts, and GTM to translate customer pain points into scalable capabilities, while maintaining high standards of quality and collaboration.

Qualifications

• 5+ years architecting, building, and operating complex software systems in production.
• 2+ years in technical leadership or engineering management.
• Proven track record shipping ambiguous, zero-to-one or scale products with evolving direction.
• Strong balance of technical depth and product instinct.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical vision and roadmap for Jurist across full stack.
• Lead architecture for core experiences: redlining, AI suggestions, deviation summaries, and workflows.
• Own the end-to-end quality bar with evals, benchmarking, and instrumentation.
• Drive backend and platform decisions for document understanding, AI orchestration, and enterprise-scale performance.
• Collaborate with Product and Design to ensure explainable, trustworthy AI outputs.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to translate customer pain points into capabilities.
• Manage and grow a team of engineers across frontend and backend.
• Establish engineering practices, reviews, planning, and rollout safety.

Skills

Technical leadership

Architecting software

LLM orchestration

Frontend & backend

Cloud & Kubernetes

Tools

TypeScript

React

Node.js

Docker/Kubernetes

Google Cloud

Job description

This is a hybrid role based out of our San Francisco office. Office attendance is required at least twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays for collaboration and connection. There may be additional in‑office days for team or company events.

About the team

Jurist is Ironclad’s AI‑native contract review experience, built for the lawyers and business teams who negotiate agreements every day. It brings together first‑pass redlining, reasoning‑backed suggested changes, deviation summaries, obligation detection, and reusable playbook libraries into a single, trusted workspace for contract review and negotiation.

Jurist is one of Ironclad’s highest‑priority product surfaces, sitting at the intersection of applied AI, legal workflows, and end‑user trust. The team owns both the user‑facing product and the backend systems that power it, including document understanding, AI orchestration, clause detection, review state management, and enterprise‑scale performance.

We’re hiring a Technical Lead Manager to lead the engineering team behind Jurist and define the next generation of AI‑assisted contract review. This is a high‑impact leadership role for someone who wants to build product at the intersection of legal workflows, applied AI, and end‑user experience.

What you’ll do

• Set the technical vision and roadmap for Jurist, spanning the full stack from user‑facing review UI to the backend systems that provide accurate, reliable AI outputs.
• Lead architecture and execution for Jurist’s core experiences: first‑pass redlining, reasoning‑backed suggestions, deviation summaries, obligation detection, and playbook‑driven review workflows.
• Own the end‑to‑end quality bar for Jurist, including evals, benchmarking, error analysis, regression prevention, and product instrumentation that improves accuracy and user trust over time.
• Drive backend and platform decisions that support document understanding, AI orchestration, review state management, permissions, and enterprise‑scale performance.
• Shape the Jurist UI and interaction model in close partnership with Product and Design, ensuring AI outputs are explainable, actionable, and trustworthy for legal and business users.
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Legal domain experts, Services, and go‑to‑market teams to translate customer pain points into scalable product capabilities.
• Manage and grow a team of strong engineers across frontend and backend, balancing speed, technical rigor, and product judgment.
• Establish strong engineering practices across design reviews, technical planning, experimentation, rollout safety, and operational excellence.

Experience and leadership

• 5+ years of experience architecting, building, and operating complex software systems in production.
• 2+ years of technical leadership or engineering management experience, including mentoring and growing high‑performing teams.
• A strong track record of shipping ambiguous, zero‑to‑one or one‑to‑scale products where product and technical direction evolved quickly.
• High agency and strong product instincts; you know when to go deep technically and when to simplify.

Technical depth

• Experience building and owning user‑facing products end‑to‑end, including both the UI layer and the backend systems that support it.
• Deep backend and distributed systems experience, especially in systems that need to be reliable, observable, secure, and scalable.
• Hands‑on fluency with modern applied AI systems, including LLM orchestration, retrieval patterns, prompt and workflow design, model evaluation, and production quality controls.
• Experience building user‑facing AI products where accuracy, explainability, and trust materially affect adoption.
• Comfort working across application, platform, and infrastructure layers.
• Familiarity with modern web and cloud stacks. Our teams commonly work in TypeScript, React, Node.js, Docker/Kubernetes, and Google Cloud, though direct experience in our exact stack is not required.

Product mindset

• You care deeply about building tools users love, not just systems that technically work.
• You can translate domain complexity into intuitive product behavior and clear engineering priorities.
• You enjoy close collaboration with product managers, designers, researchers, and customer‑facing teams to iterate quickly on new capabilities.
• You think about the full user journey, from the moment a reviewer opens a contract to the moment it’s signed.

The TLM role at Ironclad

We believe in technical leaders who stay close to the work.

• Roughly 80% building: shaping technical direction, designing systems, reviewing architecture, driving quality, and staying hands‑on where it matters most.
• Roughly 20% leading: coaching engineers, managing performance, hiring thoughtfully, and building a healthy, high‑ownership team culture.

You’ll join a company building at the center of AI and enterprise software, with the chance to solve hard product and technical problems that matter to some of the world’s most sophisticated legal and business teams.

Base Salary Range: $245,000 - $295,000

The base salary range represents the minimum and maximum of the salary range for this position based at our San Francisco headquarters. The actual base salary offered for this position will depend on numerous factors, including individual proficiency, anticipated performance, and the location of the selected candidate. Our base salary is just one component of Ironclad’s competitive total rewards package, which also includes equity awards (a new hire grant, along with opportunities for additional awards throughout your tenure), competitive health and wellness benefits, and a commitment to career growth and development.

US Full‑Time Employee Benefits at Ironclad:

• 100% health coverage for employees (medical, dental, and vision), and 75% coverage for dependents with buy‑up plan options available
• Market‑leading leave policies, including gender‑neutral parental leave and compassionate leave
• Family forming support through Maven for you and your partner
• Paid time off – take the time you need, when you need it
• Monthly stipends for wellbeing, hybrid work, and (if applicable) cell phone use
• Mental health support through Modern Health, including therapy, coaching, and digital tools
• Pre‑tax commuter benefits (US Employees)
• 401(k) plan with Fidelity with employer match (US Employees)
• Regular team events to connect, recharge, and have fun
• And most importantly: the opportunity to help build the company you want to work at

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.