Emergence AI · 1 day ago
Director of Software Engineering (AI & Delivery)
Irvine, CA
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/Executive
$300K/yr - $350K/yr
8+ years expEmergence AI is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead software delivery for customer pilots and early production deployments while building durable engineering practices that scale. The role involves owning execution across planning, architecture reviews, risk management, and ensuring delivery quality while collaborating with Product and GTM stakeholders.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)Information TechnologyInternet
Responsibilities
Own end-to-end delivery for customer pilots and early production rollouts: milestones, dependencies, scope control, and customer acceptance
Translate business/customer commitments into clear execution plans (phased delivery, success criteria, release gates)
Drive delivery cadence (sprint planning, demos, retros, execution reviews) and ensure predictable outcomes without slowing the team down
Establish and continuously improve delivery governance: definition of done, quality gates, incident readiness, and release processes
Provide technical direction on products leveraging LLMs and emerging “agentic” patterns (tool use, planning, orchestration, memory, evaluation)
Guide architecture and design reviews, ensuring reliability, scalability, security, and maintainability
Make pragmatic tradeoffs between speed and robustness; avoid one-off implementations by pushing for reusable platform capabilities where appropriate
Establish best practices for LLM application development: prompt/versioning, eval harnesses, model selection, safety/guardrails, and observability
Build modern SDLC practices that reflect how GenAI changes engineering workflows: Faster iteration cycles with stronger automated checks (CI/CD, test generation, static analysis, regression suites)
AI-assisted development practices with clear standards for review, correctness, security, and maintainability
Ensure high engineering quality through disciplined practices: code review culture, testing strategy, design docs, and operational readiness
Drive effective incident response and postmortems; ensure learnings loop back into engineering systems and processes
Lead, coach, and grow engineering managers and senior ICs; set clear expectations and career development paths
Foster a high-trust, high-ownership environment with strong accountability and healthy pace
Build hiring plans aligned to roadmap priorities; attract and retain strong engineers in a competitive market
Ensure sustainable execution by managing workload, prioritization, and resource allocation across concurrent initiatives
Partner tightly with Product, Customer Solutions, Design, and GTM to align roadmap, delivery, and customer expectations
Communicate status, risks, and tradeoffs clearly to executives and stakeholders; proactively surface issues with solution options
Support customer escalations when needed and ensure strong technical credibility in customer-facing settings
Qualification
Required
8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years leading teams as an engineering manager or director (or equivalent scope)
Proven track record delivering complex software projects end-to-end in fast-paced environments (startup experience strongly preferred)
Strong SDLC fundamentals: planning, estimation, dependency management, CI/CD, testing strategy, release management, and operational excellence
Experience building or deploying AI/LLM-enabled products (or platforms), with familiarity across: LLM application architecture, evaluation methodologies (offline evals, golden sets, human review), reliability/latency/cost tradeoffs, guardrails and safety considerations (prompt injection, data leakage, tool safety)
Strong people leadership: coaching, performance management, hiring, and team culture
Preferred
Experience with agentic systems (tool calling, orchestration, multi-step planning, workflow engines, retrieval/RAG)
Experience building developer platforms, internal tooling, or reusable frameworks that scale delivery across multiple customers
Background in enterprise deployments: security reviews, compliance, SSO, data boundaries, and customer integration patterns
Familiarity with observability stacks and LLM observability (traces, prompts, evaluation metrics, cost/latency monitoring)
Benefits
You will also be eligible for benefits.
Company
Emergence AI
Emergence AI is building the Agentic Execution Layer for enterprises, starting with automating data workflows.
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Emergence AI has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2022 (1)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$300MKey Investors
Russell AI Labs
2025-09-24Corporate Round· $300M
Recent News
vcnewsdaily.com
2025-11-25
Company data provided by crunchbase