Senior Engineering Manager – AI/Backend

Senior Engineering Manager

Full time

San Francisco California | On site

About the Company

Our client is a fast-growing AI technology company focused on building machine learning and generative AI solutions for the tax and accounting industry. The company develops products that convert complex, unstructured tax documentation into accurate and reliable structured data used in high-value professional workflows.

The engineering organization is hands-on, collaborative, customer-focused, and product-driven, with a strong emphasis on technical excellence, reliability, and rapid execution.

What You Will Own

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of approximately 4 to 7 engineers, with the opportunity to expand the organization as the business grows.

• Set clear expectations, provide direct and timely feedback, manage performance proactively, and help senior engineers grow into broader technical and leadership roles.

• Own delivery across the product development lifecycle, from technical strategy and architecture through implementation, production deployment, reliability, and iteration.

• Remain an active technical contributor by writing production software, reviewing designs and pull requests, reading code, and debugging complex issues alongside the team.

• Partner closely with the CTO, product leaders, customers, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate business problems into durable product and platform capabilities.

• Lead the integration and development of teams and systems within the broader Thomson Reuters environment while preserving a fast, accountable engineering culture.

• Drive sound engineering practices in architecture, code quality, observability, testing, operational readiness, security, and scalable cloud infrastructure.

• Hire, onboard, and retain exceptional engineers, including senior, staff, and principal-level talent.

• Build external customer-facing products that solve real operational problems and deliver measurable value to accounting professionals.

Required Qualifications

• 10 or more years of software engineering experience, including meaningful progression from individual contributor responsibilities into formal engineering leadership.

• Demonstrated experience managing approximately 2 to 10 direct reports in a formal role such as Engineering Manager, Senior Engineering Manager, Tech Lead Manager, Senior Tech Lead Manager, or Director of Engineering.

• Current hands-on engineering involvement. You still write production software regularly, review technical designs and pull requests, and debug difficult problems with senior engineers.

• Strong backend engineering, backend infrastructure, distributed systems, or backend-generalist depth. Full-stack experience is relevant when supported by substantial backend expertise.

• Experience building or leading external, customer-facing software products in a fast-moving, technology-forward product company.

• Strong technical judgment and the ability to guide architecture, execution, prioritization, and quality without becoming a delivery-only or people-only manager.

• Proven people leadership, including coaching, candid feedback, performance management, career development, and creating accountability across senior teams.

• Ability and willingness to work on site five days per week in downtown San Francisco.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience hiring, onboarding, and scaling an engineering team, particularly teams that include staff and principal engineers.

• Exposure to production ML or AI systems, including agentic systems, retrieval-based applications, document intelligence, or evaluation-driven development.

• Professional experience with Python, TypeScript, cloud infrastructure, data-intensive systems, or AI-enabled product platforms.

• Experience operating through organizational integration, acquisition, or a transition from startup scale to enterprise scale.

• A track record of balancing rapid product iteration with reliability, maintainability, and disciplined engineering execution.

What Success Looks Like

• The engineering team has clear goals, strong accountability, and a consistent ability to ship high-quality customer-facing products.

• Senior engineers receive credible technical guidance and active coaching from a manager who can engage deeply in code and architecture.

• New integrations and organizational changes are handled effectively without losing speed, ownership, or product focus.

• Engineering practices scale with the business, and the team develops a strong bench of future technical and people leaders.

Work Arrangement and Immigration

This is an on-site position based in downtown San Francisco, with an expectation of five days per week in the office. Remote work is limited to approximately 10 days annually. Eligible visa transfers, including H-1B and TN, may be considered.

Ideal Leadership Profile

The strongest candidate is a true player-coach: a proven people leader who is still energized by code, architecture, and product problem solving. This person has succeeded in demanding product environments, has built software used directly by customers, and can earn the trust of staff and principal engineers through technical credibility. The role is not suited to a manager who has moved entirely away from hands-on engineering.