This is a rare kind of engineering leadership role — one where technical depth and breadth matter as much as management skill.
You will lead a cross-functional software engineering team spanning agent systems, iOS and Android mobile, backend platform, AI infrastructure, and the software layer that will eventually power our hardware platform. The engineers you lead are strong individual contributors who will respect you for what you know as much as for how you lead. You need to be genuinely fluent across their domains — not a generalist who has heard of these things, but someone who has built them.
At the same time you will own the engineering plan, the delivery cadence, and the coordination rhythm that keeps a distributed team moving fast without losing coherence. You will be the person Ash and Mehdi rely on to make sure the right things get built, in the right order, at the right quality.
You will also be our strongest internal champion for AI-assisted software development. We use AI coding tools — Cursor, Claude, Copilot — as a core part of how we work, and we expect our VP of Engineering to model that approach, raise the team's capability with these tools, and actively shape a culture where AI-assisted development is a genuine competitive advantage rather than a novelty.
This is a hands-on role. You will write code, review architecture decisions, and get into the technical details when the team needs it. You are not managing from a distance.
You will report directly to the CEO and work in close partnership with the CPO on product-engineering alignment.
What You Will Own
Engineering delivery
Own the engineering roadmap and delivery plan — translating product priorities into a sequenced, realistic, well-resourced engineering plan
Run the engineering cadence — sprint planning, technical reviews, milestone tracking, and the rituals that keep a distributed team aligned and accountable
Ensure quality across all surfaces — agent experience, mobile clients, backend platform, and AI infrastructure — with appropriate testing and release discipline
Technical leadership
Be the technical authority the team looks to for architecture decisions, design reviews, and guidance on the hardest problems
Maintain genuine depth across the full stack — AI agent systems, mobile platforms, backend and infrastructure, and the constraints of always-on connected hardware
Identify technical risk early and either resolve it directly or put the right person on it
Team leadership and growth
Manage, mentor, and develop the North America engineering team — currently six roles being hired across backend, iOS, Android, AI engineering, design, and infrastructure
Create an environment where strong engineers do their best work — high autonomy, high accountability, high craft standards
Partner with the CPO and CEO on hiring decisions as the team grows
AI-assisted development culture
Champion the use of AI coding tools across the engineering team — not as an optional extra but as a core engineering practice
Raise the team's collective capability with AI-assisted development through hands-on demonstration, shared practices, and active coaching
Develop internal standards and patterns for effective AI-assisted development that scale as the team grows
Product-engineering partnership
Work closely with the CPO to ensure engineering decisions serve product goals and product decisions account for engineering constraints
Be the primary engineering voice in product planning conversations — surfacing tradeoffs, flagging risks, and proposing alternatives when needed
Maintain the platform architecture vision — ensuring that decisions made today do not create constraints that limit the platform tomorrow