Engineering Manager

AI is transforming how every company operates, but most enterprises are stuck. They want to move fast with AI Agents, tools, and workflows, but they can't do it safely. We're fixing that.

Our team built AI Actions for OpenAI, shipped Zapier Agents to millions of users, and launched the first remote MCP server with Anthropic. We helped establish the protocol, and now we're building the platform enterprises need to actually put AI to work.

Runlayer is one platform for MCPs, Skills, and Agents: purpose-built security, fine-grained governance, and complete observability so organizations can go all-in on AI across the entire company without the risk. We just raised a $30M Series A led by Felicis, with participation from Khosla Ventures, bringing our total raised to $42M. Already trusted by Gusto, Instacart, Opendoor, dbt Labs, and Decagon.

ABOUT THE ROLE

You'll be one of Runlayer's first engineering managers. You'll lead a pod of engineers who ship hundreds of PRs a week with AI agents writing much of the code. Your job is to keep the bar high, the team growing and the work moving, while staying close enough to the code to call a bad design when you see one. We're hiring two: one to lead Product Engineering and one to lead Platform. The team is growing fast, and the scope of this role will grow with it.

WHY YOU'LL THRIVE HERE

• Impact: Your pod ships the platform enterprises use to put AI agents to work safely. What you build reaches customers in days, not quarters.

• Excellence: Work with the team that helped establish MCP, built AI Actions for OpenAI and shipped Zapier Agents to millions of users.

• Ownership: Own your pod end to end: people, hiring, delivery, quality and on-call.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Lead a pod of 6 to 10 engineers: weekly 1:1s, career growth, performance, and the hard calls when something isn't working

• Stay hands-on: review PRs, ship code and debug production with your team

• Run delivery: turn roadmap bets into scoped work, keep cycle time low, and make sure what ships solves the customer's problem

• Own quality and reliability for your area: review standards, tests, incidents, postmortems and on-call

• Hire: run your pod's interview loop, raise the bar and close the people you want

• Make an AI-native team work at scale: review load, agent-written code, evals and the checks that stop slop from shipping

• Partner with product, design and our Chief Architect on what to build and how to build it

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 7+ years in software engineering, including 2+ years managing engineers

• A strong senior IC before you managed. You can still go deep in a design review or an incident.

• You've grown a team at a startup: hired the people, set the bar, and moved someone out when it was right

• You use AI coding agents every day and have a concrete answer to review overload and AI slop

• Fluent in Python or TypeScript, comfortable with cloud infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform)

• Direct communicator. You give hard feedback early and kindly.

• You want to manage. People are the job, not a detour from it.

BONUS QUALIFICATIONS

• Early engineer at a startup that grew from seed through Series B or beyond

• Built security, identity, infrastructure or developer-tool products

• Shipped to enterprise buyers with strict security and compliance requirements

• Hands-on with MCP, agent frameworks or LLM-backed products

• For the Platform seat: you've carried a pager and run incident response for a production platform

We provide a competitive package designed to attract and retain top talent who can work effectively with enterprise customers.

• Competitive salary and equity — compensation that reflects your expertise and customer-facing responsibilities.

• Paid time off — paid vacation, paid sick leave, and paid parental leave.

• Professional development — budget for conferences, courses, and certifications in AI, enterprise software, and customer success.

• Top-tier equipment — your choice of laptop and accessories to create your ideal work environment.

• Health benefits — comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage.

• Customer interaction opportunities — work directly with innovative companies and see the immediate impact of your work.

Not quite the right fit? Reach out to careers@runlayer.com with details about your experience and interests.