Product & Engineering Lead

AI teams face a practical scaling problem. They need experts to judge whether training data, model outputs, and agent decisions are good enough. But the right experts are hard to find, their time is limited, and no human team can inspect everything. Sapien is building Proof of Quality, or PoQ, a competitive validation system that scales expert judgment. Customers define quality through a rubric and examples answered by their experts. Agent validators are tested and ranked by how closely they reproduce that judgment. The strongest agents process the majority of the volume, while experts calibrate the system, resolve ambiguous or consequential cases, and continuously check that the agents remain reliable. Each result is preserved as evidence. This gives customers greater coverage and confidence without requiring thousands of human reviewers or removing experts from the decisions where they matter most. Why this matters Provable data quality is the foundation of downstream trust. Models trained or evaluated using unreliable data cannot reasonably be expected to behave reliably or remain aligned with human intent. We are starting with training data and model and agent outputs because these are concrete places to measure quality today. Over time, we intend to apply the same standards, evidence, and accountability to model and agent behaviour, and ultimately to the trustworthiness and alignment of the models themselves.| Our ambition is to help establish the standards and infrastructure through which AI systems earn trust. We are looking for a product focused technical leader to turn this technology into a focused product, find repeatable product market fit, and build the organization around it. The title may be Product & Engineering Lead or CTO, depending on the person. The mandate is the same. The mandate Your first responsibility is PoQ. PoQ is already running in customer pilots. The core loop works: experts define the standard, agents compete to match it, and their performance is checked over time. Your job is to turn that loop into a coherent product customers will adopt and pay for. That includes making it safe to run external validators, routing uncertain cases back to experts, and building a system in which better performance earns more work. The challenge is not producing more technology. It is deciding what should become a product, for whom, in what order, and turning that judgment into adoption and revenue. You will own that problem across product and engineering. Sapien also has two adjacent products: 1.) Vault is the collateral system behind PoQ. Validators place economic value at risk for the right to compete for work. Those that perform well continue to participate. Those that fall below the required standard, are found to be cheating, or provide bad data can lose some or all of that value. By giving poor performance and dishonest behaviour real consequences, Vault adds another layer of accountability to PoQ. 2.) Artc, short for artifact comment, is where Sapien's people and agents work together on rich documents. It is already the company's shared context and review layer. We believe it may have value for other teams, but it remains a side bet guided by evidence. You will help test that potential without allowing it to distract from PoQ. The pace Sapien operates with urgency. At important moments, the team enters concentrated missions requiring deep focus, fast decisions, direct feedback, and a willingness to run through obstacles rather than route around them. We are looking for someone energized by finite periods of extraordinary effort who can turn that effort into durable decisions, systems, ownership, and momentum. This will not suit someone who needs a long onboarding runway or waits for complete information before acting. What you will own 1.) Product direction Set and maintain a clear product strategy for PoQ, including a credible path from today's validation system to Sapien's longer term ambition to build critical infrastructure for AI trust and alignment. Decide which customers and use cases deserve focus, what the smallest valuable product is, and which technically interesting work should wait. Work directly with founders, customers, and commercial leaders. Join discovery calls, shape pilots, watch how the product is actually used, and turn that evidence into priorities. Own the positioning, product model, and market identity of PoQ's competitive validation layer, turning its underlying mechanics into a proposition customers immediately understand and value. Product market fit and revenue Treat revenue and product learning as part of the same loop. Help identify the segments where validation quality is both painful and valuable. Turn promising conversations into tightly scoped pilots, pilots into products, and successful products into repeatable commercial motions. Define the evidence that tells us whether to continue, change, or stop a product direction. 2.) Technical leadership Set technical direction and make the consequential architecture calls. This is a technical leadership role with direct delivery responsibilities. You will ship production code alongside the team, particularly where your involvement can accelerate learning, unblock delivery, or establish the standard for important systems. You will use AI enabled development workflows, review consequential designs and pull requests, and stay close enough to the code to identify weak abstractions and operational risk. You must be capable of going deep and enjoy doing so across validation design, data and consensus systems, agent runtimes, sandboxing, security boundaries, model economics, observability, and validator collateral and incentive systems. Working with the Engineering Manager, you will raise the bar for architecture, code quality, security, reliability, and engineering judgment. Your individual contribution should make the team stronger, not create a dependency on you. Protect engineering quality without allowing architecture to outrun customer value. Build a system in which important decisions are explicit, testable, and reversible where possible. Leadership and organization An Engineering Manager currently leads the team's daily management and delivery. You will inherit a capable leader to coach and develop, while clarifying decision rights and shaping the product and engineering operating model that best serves the company. You will be accountable for the performance, health, and development of the product and engineering function as a whole. 3.) Ruthless prioritization Sapien has no shortage of credible things it could build. Your job is to make the choices: ● PoQ is the primary product and product market fit mandate. ● Vault advances when it strengthens PoQ's economics and trust model. ● artc earns external investment through demonstrated pull. ● Technical sophistication follows product need rather than preceding it. Who may fit You may have been a product focused CTO, technical CPO, founder, VP Product & Engineering, or senior product and engineering leader in a company at an early stage. Strong candidates will have several of the following: ● built a technical B2B product from early hypothesis to paying customers ● worked deeply in AI validation, training data, ML infrastructure, agents, developer tools, or data systems ● led both product and engineering, formally or in practice ● coached engineering managers and senior engineers ● personally participated in customer discovery, demos, pilots, and commercial decisions ● made difficult scope decisions in a company with more ideas than resources ● enough architecture depth to challenge strong engineers ● comfort with model economics, security, and production reliability ● working knowledge of collateral, incentive systems, or market design ● made strong decisions and shipped through ambiguity and rapid change Experience with collateral or market design is useful but not the center of the role. We would rather hire an exceptional AI and data product leader who can understand that part of the system than a specialist who has never found product market fit. Who will not enjoy this role| This is unlikely to fit someone who: ● wants product requirements handed to engineering ● measures leadership primarily through team size ● prefers technical strategy to customer contact ● treats technical complexity as progress by itself ● needs a settled ideal customer profile and mature planning process ● wants a portfolio in which every product has equal priority ● is uncomfortable changing direction when market evidence demands it ● needs months to form a view before making decisions ● interprets leadership as creating process rather than producing momentum and clarity How to apply Send us your résumé or profile, plus one short example of a technical product you helped take from ambiguity to customer adoption. Explain the starting point, your personal contribution, a consequential product or architecture decision you made, the result, the timeframe, and the evidence. We care more about proof, pace, and judgment than a polished cover letter.