Pioneer Square Labs · 15 hours ago
Head of Engineering - Zucca (Vertical AI for Food & Beverage CPG)
Seattle
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/ExecutivePioneersquarelabs is introducing Zucca, an AI platform designed for the food and beverage industry to streamline product development. The Head of Engineering will lead and grow the engineering team, ensuring high-quality execution and strategic planning while fostering a collaborative engineering culture.
Enterprise SoftwareInternetMobile
Responsibilities
Both lead and ship! This is a strategic role that is also heavily hands-on
Own Zucca’s engineering outcomes end-to-end. Convert company priorities into an execution plan, run a simple weekly cadence, and deliver on schedule with high quality
Be the team’s highest-leverage engineer. Stay close to the code: tackle critical-path work, set the technical bar via reviews, and remove blockers fast
Build a small, elite team (4–6 near-term). Hire, onboard, coach, and hold a high performance bar—no passengers
Install an execution system that scales. Lightweight planning, clear ownership, release discipline, and incident response—measured with a few signals (cycle time, deploy frequency, defects, reliability)
Make AI-assisted development the default. Establish norms, tooling, and guardrails so engineers move faster without sacrificing correctness or security; continuously improve via small experiments and measurement
Own technical tradeoffs with business judgment. Decide what to build now vs later across tech debt, refactors, scalability, and reliability—based on customer impact and risk
Ship with customers, not just at them. Partner tightly with product/design/business to run pilots, iterate quickly, instrument what matters, and translate learnings into roadmap
Build trust through security-by-default. Bake security into engineering practice (least privilege, secure SDLC, threat-aware reviews, strong access controls, encryption where appropriate, and incident readiness)
Qualification
Required
Proven track record in fast-paced, early-stage environments
Ability to ship quickly, think strategically, and own outcomes end-to-end
Experience as a player-coach who can balance execution and quality
Mentoring and building teams
Experience leading engineering in an early-stage startup
Ability to hire, plan, and deliver through ambiguity
Strong full-stack generalist
Comfortable across modern frontend and backend systems
Ability to jump into unfamiliar parts of the codebase and make meaningful improvements quickly
Build high-velocity environments without bureaucracy
Communicate clearly in async-first workflows
Ability to write well, keep stakeholders aligned, and turn messy problems into concrete next steps
Make AI-assisted development a default
Help teams use AI tools thoughtfully and consistently to increase throughput and quality
Customer-close approach
Seek out feedback, synthesize it into product/engineering decisions, and deliver improvements that drive retention and satisfaction
Excited about AI-native products in F&B
Deeply curious about how AI can reshape product development workflows
Preferred
Experience scaling an engineering team from early stage through the next phase (e.g., 3–5 engineers to 8–15+)
Experience with generative AI products, including evaluation/regression practices for AI behavior and quality
Background building data-intensive platforms or complex workflow products
Familiarity with security best practices for auditable and protected data environments
Benefits
100% paid health benefits for employee and 50% for family
401k
Company
Pioneer Square Labs
Pioneer Square Labs is a studio that creates and launches technology startups.
Founded in 2015
11-50 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$27.5MKey Investors
Foundry Group
2018-01-18Series B· $15M
2015-10-01Series A· $12.5M
2015-09-29Series A
Leadership Team
Greg Gottesman
Managing Director, Co-Founder
Palvi Mehta
Partner and CFO
Recent News
vcnewsdaily.com
2025-11-19
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