Head of Engineering
Graphite
Location
New York City, New York
Employment Type
Full time
Department
Engineering, product, & design
About Us
We’re a fast-growing, post–Series B startup building the next generation of AI-driven developer tools that redefine how software is built and shipped. Our platform empowers developers with intelligent automation, seamless collaboration, and deep AI integrations that accelerate innovation at scale. Backed by top-tier investors, we’re scaling rapidly and looking for an exceptional Head of Engineering to lead our growing technical organization into the next stage of product and infrastructure maturity.
The Role
As Head of Engineering, you’ll own the technical vision, execution, and scaling of our engineering team. You’ll lead across product, platform, and infrastructure, ensuring the delivery of a secure, performant, and reliable system that meets the needs of our rapidly growing user base. You’ll build and mentor a world-class engineering culture while partnering with product, design, and AI research to bring cutting-edge developer experiences to life.
What You’ll Do
Lead & Scale: Build, mentor, and manage a high-performing engineering organization (currently ~30–50 engineers) as we scale to hundreds.
Set Technical Direction: Define and communicate a clear technical strategy aligned with business and product goals, balancing innovation with pragmatic execution.
Drive Delivery: Oversee architecture, development, and deployment of core products and infrastructure, ensuring reliability, scalability, and velocity.
Operational Excellence: Implement strong engineering processes — CI/CD, testing, observability, incident response, and security — to support rapid iteration and quality.
Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with the CTO, Product, and AI Research to translate vision into scalable technical execution.
Culture & People: Foster a culture of ownership, curiosity, and continuous learning; champion diversity, inclusion, and psychological safety.
Recruit & Retain: Attract top engineering talent; establish career ladders and coaching frameworks to retain and grow our best people.
Scale Systems & Teams: Lead modernization and scalability efforts across our backend, ML pipelines, and developer platform.
What We’re Looking For
Experience: 10+ years in software engineering, with at least 3–5 years in senior engineering leadership roles (Director / VP / Head of Engineering).
Domain Expertise: Background in AI / ML systems, developer platforms, or infrastructure tooling preferred.
Scaling Track Record: Experience leading engineering through high growth (Series B → Series D or pre-IPO phase), scaling orgs from tens to hundreds.
Technical Depth: Strong architectural understanding of distributed systems, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and modern ML pipelines.
Execution Excellence: Proven ability to balance long-term platform investments with short-term product delivery.
Leadership: Exceptional communication, organizational design, and strategic leadership skills; proven ability to inspire high-performing teams.
Bonus: Experience in open-source developer ecosystems, AI safety, or applied LLM tooling.