VP Engineering

Contact: Feel free to connect with https://www.linkedin.com/in/gchambers/VP Engineering📍 San Francisco, CA | On-site 5 days/week💰 $400K–$500K base + competitive equityProfitable, venture-backed AI company | ~140 employeesWe are looking for a VP Engineering / VP of Engineering with deep Platform Engineering and AI Infrastructure experience to join a profitable, venture-backed AI company of approximately 140 employees in San Francisco. The ideal candidate has 10+ years of software/platform engineering experience, including leading engineering teams and scaling platform or infrastructure organizations through significant company growth.We're looking for someone with recent Series A–D startup experience or rapid progression into VP/Head of Engineering-level leadership at a leading technology company. You should bring a deeply hands-on background across distributed systems, API design, cloud architecture, and production AI operations, strong TypeScript and/or Python experience, and daily use of frontier AI tools such as Claude and Cursor in your engineering workflow.This is a true player-coach leadership role with significant ownership over the company's technical direction, engineering organization, and core AI platform.🛠️ You will:Lead and grow a high-performing Platform Engineering team.Own technical strategy and architecture for the company's core AI platform.Lead development across AI infrastructure, AI agents, LLM orchestration, retrieval, evaluation, integrations, and developer tooling.Stay close to the code through PR reviews, architecture decisions, and hands-on technical problem-solving.Drive engineering velocity, reliability, scalability, observability, and quality.Partner directly with executive leadership on new products and platform initiatives.Build the engineering processes and culture required to support continued growth.🧩 100% Required:4–6+ years of engineering leadership experience, including formally managing engineering teams.Demonstrated experience scaling a platform or infrastructure organization as a company grows across revenue, funding, headcount, or product complexity.Production-scale experience with AI/agentic systems, LLM infrastructure, ML infrastructure, or other AI-native platforms.Ability to operate as a player-coach rather than a pure people manager.Strong architectural judgment and ability to evaluate complex technical tradeoffs.BS in Computer Science or a STEM-related field.Willing to work 5 days/week on-site in San Francisco.🪶 Other Skills:Experience building new products, platforms, or technical initiatives from scratch.Strong understanding of LLM orchestration, retrieval systems, evals, and modern AI infrastructure.Strong product and business instincts alongside deep technical expertise.Comfortable operating closely with founders and executive leadership.Experience working in high-growth, technically demanding environments.🧬 How The Company WorksProfitable – established commercial traction with venture backing to support continued growth.AI-native – building sophisticated, production-scale AI products and infrastructure.High ownership – engineering leadership has significant influence over technical strategy and execution.Hands-on – leaders stay close to the technology, architecture, and technical decision-making.Fast-moving – new products and platform initiatives are developed and shipped quickly.High standards – the environment rewards technical depth, ownership, strong execution, and clear communication.