Location: New York, NY (hybrid, 4 days/week in office)

Reports to: CEO

Compensation: Starting at $200K + meaningful equity

Job Description

We are hiring an Engineering Manager to build and lead our engineering function as we scale from an early-stage system into a robust, AI-driven multi-state platform.

You will own how things get built at Givers — from system architecture to execution, from developer workflows to production reliability. You will partner closely with Product to translate direction into clear, high-quality execution, while establishing the systems and standards that allow the team to scale.

This is not a pure management role and not a pure IC role. You will be responsible for the performance of the engineering team while maintaining enough technical depth to guide architecture, unblock complex problems, and ensure high standards.

Responsibilities

• Establish a reliable execution engine across the team, including sprint planning, scoping, ownership, and delivery
• Own the architecture and delivery of AI-powered product features, including retrieval systems, structured extraction, and LLM integrations — while maintaining code quality and system understanding
• Own system architecture and technical direction, ensuring systems are modular, scalable, and maintainable
• Partner closely with Product to translate ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and tradeoffs
• Push back on unclear or over-scoped work and help sequence priorities effectively
• Improve engineering velocity by reducing ambiguity and ensuring engineers always have clear, actionable work
• Build and improve engineering systems and workflows (CI/CD, testing, deployment, developer experience)
• Own production reliability, including debugging, incident response, and blameless postmortems
• Evolve how the team leverages AI tools to accelerate development and increase shared engineering context while maintaining code quality and system understanding
• Maintain hands-on familiarity with the codebase and step in selectively on high-complexity problems to unblock the team
• Build, manage, and develop a high-performing engineering team with clear ownership and high standards
• Own hiring and onboarding of engineers as the team grows
• Own security, compliance, and data protection across systems, including SOC 2 and HIPAA requirements

What Success Looks Like

• Engineering work is predictable, well-scoped, and consistently delivered on time
• The system evolves toward modular, flexible architecture without unnecessary complexity
• Product and Engineering operate as tight partners with clear ownership and strong alignment
• Engineering velocity improves without increasing team size
• Production systems are stable, issues are resolved quickly, and failures lead to lasting improvements
• Security and compliance are proactively maintained, not reactively addressed

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, with experience leading or managing engineering teams in a startup or high-growth environment
• Strong technical background with hands-on experience building and shipping production systems (ideally across web and/or mobile stacks)
• Experience building AI/ML-powered product features in production (not just using Copilot)
• Familiarity with RAG architecture: vector stores, embedding strategies, chunking, retrieval eval
• Experience designing data pipelines that produce structured, retrievable records from unstructured inputs (transcription, NLP extraction)
• Bonus: healthcare data or compliance experience with consent frameworks, HIPAA-compliant recording/storage
• Proven ability to own system architecture and make sound technical decisions that balance speed, scalability, and maintainability
• Experience translating ambiguous product requirements into clear technical plans, tradeoffs, and execution
• Track record of improving engineering team performance, including delivery, code quality, and developer experience
• Experience building or improving engineering systems and workflows (CI/CD, testing, deployment, monitoring)
• Experience owning or contributing to production reliability, including debugging, incident response, and postmortems
• Familiarity with modern development environments and comfort working across a full-stack system (Rails, React, React Native, GCP, Postgres, or similar)
• Experience hiring, mentoring, and developing engineers in a fast-paced environment
• Strong ownership mindset with a focus on outcomes, not just process
• Clear, direct communicator who can work effectively across engineering, product, and leadership
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and building structure where it doesn’t yet exist

Givers Values

• Impact Over Flash: We chase outcomes, not shiny objects. We focus on what truly moves the needle for caregivers and families, not what looks impressive from the outside. Substance beats spectacle, every time.
• Family-Grade Pride: We take pride in our work as if our own loved ones were the ones counting on it. We operate with care, integrity, and accountability.
• Play the Long Game: We build and operate for the future. We invest in strong fundamentals, solve problems to their core, make decisions that compound, and think in decades, not quarters. Sustainability beats shortcuts.
• Entrepreneurship, Every Day: We are owners. We embrace ambiguity by working from first principles and focus on speed to learnings through small bets, tight loops, quick iteration, and consistent calibration.
• Win Together: We always look for win-wins. We put mission above ego, collaborate intensely, and find common ground. We celebrate each other and never let the joy of this journey get lost behind the pursuit of a destination.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Givers is an equal opportunity employer, and we encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply.