VP of Engineering (AI Innovation & Core Platform)

Full Description

Must-have skills

Javascript

10 Year(s)

React.js

10 Year(s)

Typescript

10 Year(s)

Aws

10 Year(s)

Llm

10 Year(s)

Ai

10 Year(s)

Language required

English

Location: North America (Remote / Hybrid)

Reports to: CEO

Direct Reports: Skunk Works Squad & Core Engineering Leads

About The Company

Our hiring partner is the category creator and market leader in Learning Operations (LearnOps),serving large, complex organizations.

The company is expanding into TalentOps and HROps with a long-term vision of becoming the world’s first Workforce Enablement Platform.

The Opportunity: A “Startup within a Scale-up”

The company is at a pivotal stage of growth and is launching a dedicated “Skunk Works” cross-functional team to build a new product focused on AI Agentic Workers.

These agents will augment the human teams already using the platform, automating complex workflows across LearnOps and HROps.

This is a true builder-leader role.

You will lead the creation of this new product from zero to MVP within a tight 4-month timeline, enabling the sales team to demo a live, enterprise-ready solution.

At the same time, you will provide executive-level oversight to the broader engineering organization to ensure the existing platform remains stable and customer churn is minimized.

Core Mandate

• Speed to Market (Skunk Works): Deliver a pitch-ready, enterprise-grade MVP of the AI Agentic Worker product within 4 months.

• Platform Stability (Core): Support the existing engineering team to maintain high availability and resolve critical issues.

• AI Strategy: Define how Agentic AI integrates with existing LearnOps data models and workflows.

What You’ll Do

Lead the Skunk Works Innovation (Primary Focus)

• Rapid Prototyping & Delivery: Lead a dedicated cross-functional squad to build the AI Agent product, owning architecture, code quality, and delivery speed.

• AI Agent Architecture: Design the technical framework for AI agents capable of autonomously executing tasks for HR and Learning teams.

• 4-Month MVP Sprint: Own the timeline and scope, making pragmatic tradeoffs to ensure Sales has a compelling, demo-ready product within 120 days.

• Hands-on Leadership: This is not a purely managerial role. You will review code, make architectural decisions, and unblock the team daily.

2. Oversee Core Engineering & Retention

• Protect the Base: Partner with existing Tech Leads to ensure the current enterprise platform remains stable, secure, and performant.

• Customer Retention Focus: Prioritize bug fixes and reliability improvements that directly impact customer satisfaction and retention.

• Team Alignment: Bridge the fast-moving Skunk Works team and the core platform team, enabling knowledge sharing without slowing MVP delivery.

3. Execution & Culture

• Bimodal Engineering Leadership: Manage two distinct operating modes—rapid experimentation for the AI product and disciplined CI/CD for the core platform.

• Resource Allocation: Make hard decisions on where to deploy engineering effort to balance near-term MVP delivery with long-term platform health.

What Success Looks Like

• Month 4: The AI Agent MVP is live, stable, and actively demoed by Sales to prospective customers.

• Month 6: The new AI product becomes a primary focus for the company, while the legacy platform remains stable and ready for client migration.

• Ongoing: Critical platform issues are resolved within SLAs, and technical debt is actively managed to maintain customer trust.

Ideal Background

• Experience: 12+ years in software engineering, with recent hands-on experience in Generative AI, LLMs, or Agentic workflows. 0 1 and 1

• N Mindset: Proven ability to launch new products quickly while operating and scaling established SaaS platforms.

• Technical Stack: Strong familiarity with modern AI stacks (e.g., vector databases, LangChain / AutoGPT concepts) and core technologies such as JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Postgres, and AWS.

• Leadership: Experience leading cross-functional innovation teams or “tiger teams” under high-pressure, time-bound deadlines.