Vice President of Engineering

Space Executive; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 350,000 - 700,000; Full time

Job summary

Space Executive partners with a high-growth music technology business seeking a VP of Engineering in San Francisco to own the multi-disciplinary engineering function across backend, mobile, web, data, and infrastructure.

In this builder-focused role, you will design a standard approach to agent-driven software development, set architecture and tooling, and coach senior engineers to deliver measurable productivity gains in a fast-paced, mission-led culture.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in software engineering with leadership of large teams.
• Senior engineering leadership in scaled consumer, marketplace or subscription business.
• Hands-on depth across architecture, data design, mobile performance and scale.
• Proven track of putting AI/ML into production in both product features and engineering processes.
• Evidence of materially improving developer productivity and experience.
• Essential: hands-on agentic development capability from scratch with measurable productivity gains.
• Clear, confident communicator with product and executive teams.

Responsibilities

• Shape a long-term technology and AI roadmap for the platform.
• Ship AI features to help artists grow audiences and revenue.
• Lead engineering managers and grow leadership across squads.
• Run modern CI/CD with AI-assisted workflows and measurable throughput.
• Collaborate with product, design, data, marketing and artist teams.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Team management

Architecture

Mobile performance

Data design

AI/ML production

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

ML tooling

Cloud platforms

Job description

Music technology / creator economy | Venture-backed scaleup

Overview

We’re partnering with a high-growth music technology business that helps independent artists release, grow and earn from their work. They’re looking for a VP of Engineering to take ownership of a multi-disciplinary engineering function spanning backend, iOS, Android, web, data, quality and infrastructure. The remit covers both a consumer subscription product and an expanding B2B services arm for labels.

AI is the defining theme of the role. On the product side, that means using it to make the platform smarter for artists through personalised experiences, intelligent tooling and automation. On the engineering side, it means using it to change how the team builds software, from development tooling and testing through to operations.

This is a builder’s role rather than a caretaker’s. In year one, the priority is designing and rolling out a standard approach to agent-driven software development across the organisation. You’ll set the method, choose the architecture and tools, define how context and documentation are managed, put evaluation and safety guardrails in place, bring engineers along through hands-on coaching, and show clear productivity gains as a result. The business specifically wants someone who has done this work themselves, not someone who oversaw it or adopted a framework built elsewhere.

The right person combines strong systems thinking, genuine people leadership and a bias for execution, and enjoys working in a fast-paced, mission-led culture.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy, AI and architecture

• Shape a long-term technology and AI roadmap for the whole platform, with emphasis on machine learning, automation and mobile.
• Ship AI features that help artists understand their audiences, reach new listeners, market their releases and grow revenue.
• Use AI to make engineering faster and better, with measurable results in throughput, lead time and defect rates.
• Design the organisation’s end-to-end approach to agentic development: workflows, task orchestration across agents and tools, tool selection, supporting infrastructure and team-wide rollout.
• Build the groundwork for production-grade AI agents, including architecture, state and memory handling, retrieval, tool integration, evaluation, human oversight and protection against prompt injection and data leakage.
• Modernise the platform architecture so it remains resilient, secure and able to scale globally.

People and organisation

• Lead a team of engineering managers and senior individual contributors, and grow the next layer of leadership.
• Define career frameworks, performance standards and what good engineering looks like.

Delivery

• Run a modern development lifecycle with mature CI/CD, test automation and AI-assisted workflows.
• Encourage rapid experimentation backed by solid metrics.
• Make delivery predictable and quality consistent across squads.
• Work with Product and Design leaders on roadmap priorities and resourcing, and keep stakeholders informed on progress and risk.
• Partner with product, design, data, commercial, marketing and artist-facing teams.
• Turn company objectives into practical engineering plans and give leadership clear visibility on delivery.

Candidate Profile

Required

• 12+ years in software engineering, with at least 5 leading teams of 25+ that include managers and senior ICs.
• Senior engineering leadership in a scaled consumer, marketplace or subscription business.
• Hands-on depth across architecture, data design, mobile performance and scale.
• A record of putting AI/ML into production in both product features and engineering processes.
• Evidence of materially improving developer productivity and experience.
• Essential: personal, hands-on experience creating an agentic development capability from scratch, including the methodology, tooling, context standards and evaluation and safety frameworks, with productivity improvements you can quantify.
• Clear, confident communicator who works well with product and executive teams.

Nice to have

• Background in media distribution, content pipelines, payments, subscriptions or rights management.
• Solid grasp of ML infrastructure, data science and experimentation tooling.
• Experience in creator economy, digital media or marketplace businesses.