Director of Engineering, AI Agents

Director of Engineering, AI Agents | High-Growth AI Startup 📍 San Francisco, CA 💰 Base salary up to $450K + meaningful equity 🏢 Full-time, 5 days onsite 🚀 Path toward VP-level leadership ✈️ Visa sponsorship and relocation support available A fast-growing, venture-backed AI startup in San Francisco is looking for a Director of Engineering, AI Agents to own and scale its AI organization. The company is building production AI agents that automate complex workflows for enterprise customers. This is a highly technical leadership position for someone who has successfully built production LLM/agent systems, scaled engineering teams, and still enjoys being deeply involved in code and architecture. What You’ll Do Own and scale the AI engineering organizationSet technical direction for production LLM and agent systemsBuild agentic systems involving tool use, planning, orchestration, evaluations, and reliabilityRecruit, mentor, and develop a world-class AI engineering teamHire and develop future engineering leadersRemain hands-on with architecture, code reviews, and experiment designPartner closely with founders on technical and product strategyHelp build multiple specialized AI engineering teams as the company scalesMust-Haves 7+ years of AI/ML engineering experienceLed an AI/ML team that shipped production LLM or AI agent systemsBuilt and scaled an engineering team of 10+Deep hands-on experience with agentic AI architecturesStrong knowledge of tool use, planning, multi-agent orchestration, and evaluation frameworksStill actively writes or reviews codeAbility to evaluate technical architecture and experiment designStrong people leadership, mentoring, recruiting, and team-building skillsCS or related technical degree from a top-tier universityClear and concise communicatorHigh-ownership, founder-style mindsetMust be based in or willing to relocate to San FranciscoComfortable working onsite 5 days per weekNice-to-Haves Early-stage or high-growth B2B SaaS startup experienceExperience with model routingProduction LLM reliability and infrastructureMultimodal AI pipelinesAdvanced evaluation frameworksFounder or early-stage leadership experienceNot the Right Fit If You are primarily a people manager and are no longer technically hands-onYour background is primarily research or advisory work without shipped productsYou haven't led production AI-agent developmentYou are looking for remote or hybrid workYour experience is primarily traditional large-tech environments without high-growth startup exposureWhy Join This is an opportunity to own the entire AI organization at a rapidly scaling startup and shape both technical architecture and product direction. You'll work directly with technical founders, build the AI organization from the ground up, and have a potential path toward VP-level engineering leadership