Vice President of Engineering

We are hiring for our client- a well-funded AI startup creating innovative products at the intersection of web applications and modern AI. Their goal is to build seamless, delightful personalization experiences that enhance everyday life through trusted services.

About the company

• Backed by top Silicon Valley venture capital and leading angels from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, NVIDIA/ARM, and Oracle AI.
• Led by proven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who have scaled startups to IPOs and Fortune 500 exits.

We are looking for a Vice President of Engineering, who will help define and build the core product from the ground up. This is a true zero-to-one role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, moves quickly, and cares deeply about engineering craft, product quality, and long-term technical leverage.

You’ll work closely with the founders, product, and design to architect, build, and ship the platform. You’ll stay hands-on across the stack, make foundational technical decisions, and help shape both the product and engineering culture from day one.

What you’ll do

• Build and scale core product and platform systems from prototype to production.
• Own major pieces of architecture, implementation, and execution.
• Write production code every week and ship alongside the team.
• Design APIs, debug live issues, build infrastructure, and improve developer velocity.
• Make smart technical tradeoffs across frontend, backend, data, cloud, and AI infrastructure.
• Partner directly with founders and cross-functional teammates to turn ambiguity into concrete execution.
• Help establish lightweight engineering processes, reliability standards, and technical best practices.
• Contribute to the hiring and growth of the engineering team as the company scales.

What we’re looking for

• 15 years of engineering experience, with strong startup or product company experience. (prior startup and consumer tech business experience is a MUST)
• Demonstrated track record of building and scaling systems from 0→1 at a startup — you've been one of the early members of the tech team (founding CTO, or first VP of Engg) on at least one product that went from blank repo to meaningful traction (revenue, users, or both)
• Genuinely full-stack — strong, current expertise across frontend (modern JS/TS, React or equivalent), backend (Python, Go, Node, or similar), data infrastructure, cloud (AWS/GCP), and ideally AI/ML systems; comfortable owning any layer when it matters
• Deeply hands-on operator — you write production code regularly, sit in standups, jump into incidents, pair with engineers, and roll up your sleeves; you do not lead from a dashboard
• Obsession with shipping — strong instinct for when to ship vs. harden further, history of making hard scope calls, and a track record of shipping fast without compromising quality, reliability, or security
• Prior early-stage startup experience is required — you have firsthand experience operating in pre-PMF or early-PMF environments with minimal process and maximum ambiguity
• You are expected to fully leverage AI tools in everything you do and operate with a high level of efficiency, with strong familiarity and comfort using tools like Claude
• Code as a core part of your day-to-day engineering work
• Strong product sense — you can have substantive product conversations, push back on PRDs, and earn product/design's trust through judgment, not titles
• Excellent engineering taste and craft — opinions about API design, performance budgets, observability, code quality, and the small details that make a system feel reliable
• Comfort thriving in ambiguous, fast-moving startup environments with minimal structure — you create the structure you need
• Strong written and verbal communication; able to align founders, engineers, product, design, and customers around a shared technical vision
• BS in Computer Science or equivalent technical background required; advanced degree a plus

Nice to have

• Prior founding engineer or early engineer experience.
• Experience shipping AI-powered consumer products, personalization, or agentic systems.
• Experience with modern AI infrastructure such as RAG, vector databases, or evaluation tooling.
• Background in distributed systems, real-time infrastructure, or low-latency services.

Why join us

• Join a core founding team at a well-funded AI startup.
• Work with proven founders and top-tier investors.
• Have real ownership, high impact, and meaningful upside.
• Help define both the product and engineering culture from the ground up.

Location: Bay Area candidates welcome to apply (job location is on site in Palo Alto)

Interested candidates can also write to subiksha.devaraj@qrata.ai with their resumes and background. We will reach out to shortlisted candidates for a chat to discuss more about the role!