Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering

Location Type: On-site, 5 days/week in SF

Compensation: $200K to $370K + equity

Relocation: Supported

Visa Sponsorship: Supported

About the Company

Shields Group Search is partnering with a high-growth AI infrastructure startup building the connective layer between AI agents and the tools people use every day.

The company is building infrastructure that allows agents to securely communicate with and take action across workplace tools like GitHub, Gmail, Notion, Salesforce, and more. Their platform sits at the center of the emerging agent ecosystem, handling the hard infrastructure around auth, tool execution, triggers, search, planning, sandboxing, and reliable interaction with external systems.

The team has raised a major Series A from top-tier investors and is already working with fast-growing AI-native companies, startups, and enterprise customers. They are looking for exceptional engineering leaders who combine deep technical rigor, strong management ability, and a genuine AI-native mindset.

The Role

We are looking for an exceptional Engineering Manager / Engineering Leader to help lead a high-caliber engineering team building core infrastructure for AI agents. This role could flex from Engineering Manager to Head of Engineering depending on the person. The company is less focused on a rigid title match and more focused on finding someone who has operated in excellent engineering environments, led strong teams, and grown quickly in a high-growth technical company.

This is not a process-only management role. The right person will be deeply technical, capable of earning the respect of strong engineers, and comfortable operating close to architecture, product tradeoffs, execution quality, and hiring. The ideal candidate has been through at least one startup journey, has recently managed teams at a strong engineering company, and has experience in a fast-growing, venture-backed technology environment. Developer experience or platform/infrastructure experience is a strong plus.

What You’ll Do

• Lead and grow a high-performing engineering team building core AI infrastructure.
• Work closely with founders and engineering leadership to define technical direction and execution priorities.
• Help the team ship platform primitives and APIs across auth, tool execution, triggers, tool search, tool planning, sandboxing, and agent workflows.
• Stay close enough to the technical work to challenge architecture, unblock engineers, and maintain a high bar for system design and code quality.
• Recruit, mentor, and develop exceptional engineers.
• Create the right operating rhythm for a fast-moving, in-person engineering culture.
• Help the team balance speed, reliability, product quality, and customer urgency.
• Work closely with customers and product teams to understand real workloads and turn that feedback into better infrastructure.
• Build trust across the team by being technically sharp, direct, thoughtful, and highly accountable.

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of software engineering experience preferred, though exceptional fast-rising candidates with slightly less experience will be considered.
• Engineering management experience, ideally leading strong teams recently.
• Experience at a high-growth technology company, especially a venture-backed startup or elite engineering organization.
• At least one meaningful startup journey or experience in a fast-moving startup environment.
• Strong technical background across modern software engineering, backend systems, infrastructure, platform engineering, developer tools, or product engineering.
• A track record of managing technically strong engineers.
• AI-native mindset. You have been actively using AI tools over the last 6 to 12 months and are genuinely enthusiastic about how AI changes software development.
• Strong technical rigor. You can go deep on architecture, systems, tradeoffs, and execution quality.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and moving quickly.
• Strong written and verbal communication.
• Willingness to work 5 days/week in person in San Francisco.
• High ownership, high standards, and low ego.

Strong Signals

• Experience at companies like Stripe, Ramp, Uber, Medium, or similarly high-caliber engineering cultures.
• Recent experience at a fast-growing startup or venture-backed technology company.
• Developer experience, platform, infrastructure, API, integrations, or tooling background.
• Experience building scalable, low-latency, high-throughput, or highly available systems.
• Experience with AI agents, LLMs, tool calling, MCP, auth, workflows, sandboxes, or AI-native developer products.
• Founder, early engineer, tech lead, or startup engineering leadership background.
• Strong education or other evidence of exceptional technical ability.
• Open-source contributions, large side projects, or evidence of building outside of work.
• Ability to write clearly and explain complex technical ideas simply.