Technical Program Manager (Copy)

Socket.dev; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary & equity

Health, dental, vision coverage

401(k) plan and disability insurance

Flexible time off

Daily meals in the office and team off

Direct access to founders and early-m/

Job summary

BackOps is seeking an engineering leader to guide a team of product engineers building the systems that power customer operations. You will own the evolution of the core product, ensuring reliability, scalability, and strong product/design collaboration with customers and partners.

This role values hands-on leadership, deep systems thinking, and a clear product-driven approach to AI-enabled workflows. You will work closely with product and design, read code, participate in reviews, and set a

Qualifications

• 5+ years managing engineers with a strong hands-on engineering background.
• Deep grounding in system design, code quality, testing, and release practice.
• Proven track record shipping quality software and raising the engineering standard of a team.
• Strong product and design instincts with own opinions on product direction.
• Experience building with LLMs or AI agents in production.
• Genuine AI-first approach; using coding agents in your workflow.
• Comfortable when requirements evolve and the right answer is not known yet.
• Clear written and verbal communication with engineers, designers, customers, and founders.

Responsibilities

• Hire, lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of product engineers.
• Own the evolution of BackOps core product and the end-to-end product surface.
• Oversee the software development lifecycle: architecture, design, code review, testing, release, production stability.
• Drive predictable delivery and raise engineering quality; own ships and timing.
• Partner with Product and Design in a fast loop; bring opinions, ship, measure.
• Collaborate directly with customers and design partners to adapt to changing operations.
• Guide planning and evaluation of AI agents; build fluency in AI workflows.
• Champion reliability, safety, and performance of systems in live customer environments.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Hands-on coding

System design

Code quality/testing/release

Product and design instincts

AI agent/LLM production

AI-first engineering

Clear communication

Job description

About BackOps

BackOps AI transforms supply-chain operations with agentic AI that automates complex workflows, freeing teams to focus on what matters most. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, we foster a culture of innovation, ownership, and measurable impact.

The Role

Core Product Engineering sits at the core of BackOps, building the product that turns complex supply-chain operations into reusable workflow automations. We are seeking an engineering leader to guide a team of product engineers building the systems our customers run their operations on.

This role is for leaders who think in products as much as in systems. This product area does not have settled patterns yet, so a large part of this job is product and design thinking done alongside Product and Design, not execution handed down from a roadmap. You should want to be close to the work: read code, sit in design reviews, and hold a high bar on how the software gets built.

Your Impact

In this role, you will own the evolution of BackOps core product, making sure it meets the next wave of customer scale, quality, and reliability needs. You will partner with product, design, and customers to deliver software that ships predictably and holds up in production.

• Hire, Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of product engineers.
• Own the evolution of BackOps core product: the reusable workflow automations customers run their operations on, and the product surface end to end.
• Own the software development lifecycle end to end: architecture and design, code review, testing, release, and what happens in production afterward.
• Drive predictable delivery and raise the engineering quality bar. Be accountable for what ships, when it ships, and how well it holds up.
• Partner with Product and Design in a tight, fast loop. Bring your own product opinions, decide quickly, ship, and measure.
• Work directly with customers and design partners. Their operations change constantly, and the product has to change with them.
• Drive how we plan, evaluate, and improve our AI agents, and build the team's fluency in doing it.
• Champion reliability, safety, and performance of the systems running in live customer environments.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years managing engineers, on top of a strong hands-on engineering background.
• Deep grounding in software engineering fundamentals: system design, code quality, testing, and release practice. You can go deep with your engineers on a design decision.
• A track record of shipping quality software predictably, and of raising the engineering standard of a team.
• Strong product and design instincts. You can hold your own in a design review and you bring your own opinions about what the product should do.
• Experience building with LLMs or AI agents in production, and a clear view on how to tell whether they are working.
• A genuine AI-first approach to engineering. You use coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex) in your own workflow and you can teach it.
• Comfortable when requirements evolves and the right answer is not known yet.
• Clear written and verbal communication with engineers, designers, customers, and founders.

Nice to Have

• Depth in evals, agent orchestration, multi-agent architectures, or RAG in production.
• Zero-to-one experience: built a product from an idea to product-market fit.
• Built with design partners, where the customer is in the loop weekly.
• Grown a team through a step change in size, and hired well while doing it.
• Exposure to operationally complex industries (logistics, supply chain, manufacturing, retail).

What Success Looks Like

• Every cross-team initiative has an owner, a definition of done, and a status you can trust.
• Intake has a front door, and unplanned work is measured weekly rather than estimated once a year.
• The org plans and re-plans without it being an event.
• Escalation paths are designed, written down, and used in a real incident.
• Systemic problems get fixed once rather than escalated repeatedly.
• Leadership makes decisions on current information without anyone assembling it by hand.

Why BackOps

• Own the core product of an AI-native company at the point where it is still being defined.
• See your work land in real supply-chain operations and show up in a customer's week.
• Small team with real autonomy and direct access to founders and customers.
• Backed by exceptional investors and advisors.

Rewards

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) plan, disability insurance, and life insurance.
• Flexible time off.
• Daily meals in the office, and regular team events and offsites.