VP of Engineering

Transluce; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 500,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

Transluce, a San Francisco-based research lab, seeks a technically oriented engineering leader to scale its engineering function from 20 to 40+ by mid-2027. The role spans product, AI systems, and research infrastructure, tightly aligned with the research team.

Prior leadership in scalable environments is a strong plus; visa sponsorship is available. The position requires setting a clear technical direction, driving culture, and building a high-caliber team that delivers impact across the

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering at a fast-growing company.
• Ability to hire and develop engineers and managers.
• Strong communication of vision and strategy.

Responsibilities

• Drive technical and operational excellence across the engineering function and broader org through culture, process, and systems.
• Hire and retain an industry leading technical team to advance Transluce’s mission.
• Build engineers’ and managers’ careers across the org.
• Work with technical staff and leadership across Transluce to create clarity around goals, priorities, and roadmaps at both the org-level and team-level.
• Manage competing priorities and explain trade-offs, advocating for what’s best for the organization.
• Clearly communicate Transluce’s mission, strategy, and technical direction internally and externally; explain how each new hire contributes to the vision.
• Facilitate effective collaboration within and across teams.
• Set vision and prioritization for core infrastructure; design the platform/technical stack with senior engineers.

Skills

Leadership

Hiring engineers

Roadmap planning

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication

Job description

Salary range:

$500,000 - $600,000/year + benefits

Description:

Transluce is a non-profit research lab building the world's infrastructure for understanding AI.We do this through foundational research to discover and measure emerging high-stakes behaviors of AI systems, delivered through scalable products and influential public evaluations. Our work already shapes how AI is built and how it's governed: our agent-analysis platform, Docent, was used in Claude's safety analysis and is integrated with core agent benchmarks like SWE-bench, while our evaluations are directly underpinning regulation, including our role as EU AI Office’s main evaluation developer for harmful manipulation risks.

About the role:

We're hiring our first dedicated engineering leader to build the engineering function Transluce needs for its next stage of growth: from 20 people (14 technical) to 40+ by mid-2027. Our central bet is to use AI to understand AI, using both scaffolded off-the-shelf agents as well as specialized agents trained internally. Our engineering work spans product, AI systems, and research infrastructure, and is tightly integrated with our research function. We are looking for a strong, technically-oriented engineering leader; expertise in AI or research are a plus, but not required.

Core responsibilities:

• Drive technical and operational excellence across the engineering function and broader org through culture, process, and systems
• Hire and retain an industry leading technical team to advance Transluce’s mission
• Build engineers’ and managers’ careers across the org
• Work with technical staff and leadership across Transluce to create strong clarity and alignment around goals, priorities, and roadmaps, at both the org-level and team-level
• Manage competing priorities and identify and explain trade-offs, advocating for what’s best for the organization
• Clearly communicate Transluce’s mission, strategy, and technical direction internally and externally; know how each new hire would come to the team and contribute to that vision
• Facilitate effective collaboration within and across teams
• Set vision and prioritization for core infrastructure; work with senior engineers to design the overall platform/technical stack

Qualities of a strong candidate:

• Able to operate on a 12+ month time horizon for organizational design, technical strategy, and overall org theory of change
• Can hire and inspire senior engineers, researchers and managers by being someone they can learn and grow from
• Articulates and argues for a clear perspective, but is prepared to disagree and commit
• Past experience in a similar role: taking a small, fast-growing company from 20 to 40+ as a senior leader working with one or more layers of management below them
• Strong management skills with an ability to both directly line manage teams and mentor and lead managers
• Not afraid to get into the technical details where relevant, but also able to make good decisions without knowing every detail

We are located in San Francisco and enthusiastic to work together in-person. We are open to sponsoring international visas.