VP of Engineering, Applications

What You'll be Doing

• Own the application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile, and desktop.
• Lead and grow a small, senior applications team, including backend, mobile, and desktop engineers.
• Set the architectural direction for AI-powered product workflows, APIs, and client integrations.
• Ensure AI capabilities are integrated into the product with clear abstractions, predictable behavior, and graceful failure modes.
• Partner closely with Machine Learning leadership to translate model capability into shippable product features.
• Make high-impact decisions across latency, cost, reliability, security, and user experience.
• Establish clear ownership boundaries across backend, mobile, and desktop to prevent architectural drift.
• Ensure production readiness: observability, monitoring, retries, fallbacks, privacy, and cost controls.
• Balance speed and discipline – shipping quickly without compromising long-term system quality.

What You Will Need

• Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems.
• Strong hands-on background building and shipping backend systems used in production.
• Experience delivering AI-powered products, with a deep understanding of model integration trade-offs.
• Excellent system design skills across services, APIs, clients, and data flows.
• Comfort operating across platforms (backend, mobile, desktop), even if your depth is in one.
• Proven ability to make high-impact technical decisions under ambiguity.
• A strong bias toward shipping, iteration, and learning from real-world usage.
• Low ego, strong judgment, and the ability to raise the technical bar for the entire applications organization.

Outcomes

• Reliable, low-latency AI user experiences across backend, mobile, and desktop
• Clear architectural boundaries that allow teams to move fast without constant rewrites.
• Measurable improvements in system performance, stability, and production reliability.
• Strong observability and operational discipline across all application systems.
• A small, senior team that ships frequently, owns what they build, and raises the technical bar.
• Team members are empowered, growing in their roles, and able to make high-impact contributions.