Applied AI Engineer - Manager
$250k - $425k • New York City • FullTime
Posted 1mo ago
About the job
Percepta is seeking a player-coach Engineering Manager to lead and grow a team of Applied AI Engineers. These engineers embed directly with customer teams to deliver production AI systems in challenging enterprise environments. As a manager, you will be responsible for scaling the growth of your team, focusing on their development and trajectory. This is a hands-on role where you will still be writing code, reviewing designs, and stepping in to ensure successful launches. You will partner with Engagement Leads on customer strategy and Growth Leads on engineer development, while also contributing to the evolution of Percepta's in-house toolkit, Mosaic, based on your deep understanding of customer pain points.
Responsibilities
- Grow engineers by defining their development trajectory and assigning meaningful stretch assignments.
- Ensure proper onboarding for new team members through intensive initial support and pairing.
- Provide timely and specific feedback on design approaches and code quality.
- Own the technical outcomes of all workstreams within your team, maintaining sufficient context to prevent crises.
- Make critical technical decisions, documenting the rationale and assumptions, even with incomplete information.
- Establish and maintain team standards for code quality, testing, reviews, and documentation.
- Manage the technical relationship with customers, building trust through consistent delivery and insightful questions.
- Translate field observations and customer needs back into product improvements for the Mosaic toolkit.
- Participate in the hiring process, including interviewing and shaping recruitment strategies.
Requirements
- 7+ years of experience building production software.
- At least 2 years of experience leading or managing engineers.
- Proficiency in writing code, specifically in Python and TypeScript.
- Demonstrated ability to improve engineer performance through effective management.
- Strong systems design sense, including the ability to articulate design choices, potential strain points, and trade-offs.
- Comfort operating in ambiguous environments and proactively exploring unfamiliar systems.
- Empathy for product users, considering adoption costs and integration challenges.