Head of Engineering (Backend/Infra)

Note on Work Culture: Most of the employees are in the office until 8pm on weekdays, and the entire team is generally available online on the weekends as well.Investment profileSeed-stage company in San Francisco building vertical AI for physical science R&D.They’re building an AI-native system that helps scientists and engineers make faster, better decisions by unifying fragmented technical data and powering workflow-specific agents.The company has strong design partners, access to unique datasets, and a highly technical early team working in person 5 days/week.SummaryThis is not a role for a career manager. And it's not a role for someone who hasn't had hire/fire responsibility yet either. The ideal candidate is an EM who is still a highly technical ("hands on" backend, infrastructure, platform, or AI systems) and are ready for a significant increase in scope.This role starts much closer to technical leadership than executive management. Early on, you should expect to architect and build core systems, write production code, review implementation details, debug production issues, and ship 0-to-1 product capabilities alongside the team. The technical surface area includes data ingestion, representation systems, retrieval, agentic workflows, evaluation, backend infrastructure, and product architecture.Over time, your leverage will increasingly come from hiring, developing engineers, setting technical direction, and helping the engineering organization scale.Again, we’re not looking for a traditional Director or VP profile. Many of the strongest candidates will likely be Engineering Managers who have been leading small teams and still remain close to architecture and implementation.The company has assembled an exceptional early team and is reaching a point where the right technical leader can help shape both the product platform and the engineering organization.What You’ll OwnArchitecting and building core product and infrastructure foundationsShipping 0-to-1 product capabilities alongside the teamBuilding data ingestion, retrieval, evaluation, and agentic workflow systems over complex real-world technical dataTechnical direction and architectural decision-makingEngineering execution and deliveryHiring, mentoring, and developing exceptional engineersLightweight engineering processes that improve execution without slowing the team downBuilding systems and teams that scale togetherYou’ll work closely with the founders on both technical and organizational questions, helping shape how the company evolves over the coming years.What We’re Looking ForYou likely have experience:Building backend, infrastructure, platform, distributed, or AI systemsShipping 0-to-1 products or major product capabilities in startup, applied AI lab, or high-growth environmentsBuilding production systems involving retrieval, evaluation, agents, data pipelines, or complex technical dataLeading small, highly technical engineering teamsHiring and developing strong engineersDriving important technical decisions under ambiguityOperating in fast-moving and unstructured environmentsMaintaining high standards for engineering qualityExperience with modern AI products, agentic workflows, search and ranking, retrieval systems, multimodal data, computer vision, LLM applications, or scientific/engineering data systems is especially relevant.Prior startup experience is a strong plus.We’re less interested in titles than we are in technical credibility, slope, judgment, ownership, and the ability to lead exceptional engineers.Our ideal candidate is still a builder at heart. They care deeply about engineering quality, enjoy working with exceptional engineers, and are excited by the opportunity to help shape a company during its formative years.About UsGreylock is an early-stage investor in hundreds of remarkable companies including Airbnb, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Workday, Cloudera, Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Coinbase, Palo Alto Networks, among others. More can be found about us here: https://greylock.com/How We WorkWe are full-time, salaried employees of Greylock and provide free candidate referrals/introductions to our active investments. We will contact anyone who looks like a potential match to schedule an initial call.Due to the selective nature of this service and the volume of applicants we typically receive from our job postings, a follow-up email will not be sent until a match is identified with one of our investments.Please note: We are not recruiting for any roles within Greylock at this time. This job posting is for direct employment with a startup in our portfolio.