VP R&D

We're looking for a VP R&D to build both the technical foundation and the engineering organization behind that platform. This is not pure people management, and it's not a chief-architect role in disguise. It's a rare combination: a deeply technical leader who can challenge the strongest engineer in the room on architecture, and who also builds an organization where talented people grow, decide independently, and own outcomes end to end.What You'll OwnTechnical direction: Define architecture and technical strategy with the CTO, Product and AI leadership.

Make real tradeoffs between speed, simplicity, reliability and long-term scale. Stay deep enough to lead architecture reviews, surface hidden risks, and tell the difference between an impressive demo and a dependable production system.An enterprise-grade agentic platform: Agent orchestration, planning and tool use governed knowledge and policy representation retrieval, context and memory evaluations human review and escalation permissions, identity, security and auditability reliability and observability cost, latency and model performance enterprise integrations.The R&D organization: Design the structure for the company's next stage. Recruit exceptional engineers and engineering leaders at a consistently high bar.

Grow managers and senior ICs who own major domains independently. Set clear expectations, feedback and performance standards - and build a leadership bench so the org doesn't depend on a handful of people.Autonomy with accountability: Define outcomes, decision boundaries and interfaces, then push decisions as close to the problem as possible. Autonomy that produces better and faster decisions - not ambiguity, duplicated work, or diffused responsibility.Velocity and quality together: An operating model that moves fast without normalizing instability.

Better planning, testing, deployment, observability and incident learning. AI-native development as real leverage for every engineer, with clear standards for security, correctness and human judgment.Business impact: Shape the roadmap with Product rather than receiving requirements. Join strategic customer conversations where technical leadership builds trust and unblocks adoption.

Operate as a company leader, not only a function leader.Requirements: Significant experience building complex software systems - backend, cloud, distributed systems, data platforms or enterprise architectureSeveral years leading engineering organizations through managers and senior technical leaders across multiple teamsA track record of scaling an org while preserving technical quality, speed, accountability and the talent barHands-on experience building or operating AI / ML / LLM / agentic systems in productionReal understanding of what makes AI agents reliable: evaluations, orchestration, context, model behavior, observability, permissions, security, failure handlingCredible contribution to architecture without becoming the approval bottleneckManagement treated as a craft: hiring, coaching, feedback, performance management, org designStrong product and business judgment, and clear communication with engineers, executives and customersComfort in an early-stage environment where product, org and category are still being shapedThis position is open to all candidates.