Engineering Manager (AI Platform)

Posted Nov 29

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

  • We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
  • We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
  • We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra is based in the USA but 100% remote; we do not have a physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Italy, Portugal, and India.

**Please only apply to one opening. If you are a better fit for another opening, our team will move your application. Candidates who apply to multiple openings will not be considered.**

Who You Are

Phaidra is looking for a passionate engineering manager to lead our AI Platform Engineering team. As such, you will own and drive Phaidra’s core AI/ML platform technologies with a forward looking orientation towards MLOps and services or the advancement of Reinforcement Leaning agents.

You are curious and like to know the technical details of your team’s work - often providing technical guidance as and when required. Leading by example, you have accumulated a wealth of insights and experiences from your hands-on involvement in the field, and you remain committed to rolling up your sleeves and diving into the technical fray to support your team when the situation demands it.

You know how to lead and manage a team and engineering projects to succeed on the implementation and operations of scalable AI solutions. You excel in orchestrating these endeavors in an entirely remote work setting, showcasing your prowess in managing and guiding distributed teams.

**We are seeking a team member located within one of the following areas: UK/EU

Responsibilities

The AI Platform engineering team led by you is responsible for building the core platform that powers model training, inference and decision making in our products. Furthermore the team owns MLOps and the services hosting our AI capabilities. Productionizing results from Research, as well as extending our systems and providing support according to our customer needs fall into team responsibilities as well.

  • Lead - You will lead a high functioning team of engineers, provide them with guidance and remove blockers, help them grow and push them to perform their best - including gathering feedback and calibrating regularly in your 1:1s.
  • Plan - Work closely with other leads, product managers and company leadership to develop short and long-term roadmap and strategy for the team.
  • Deliver - You will be the owner of your team’s technology and deliverables. You will take part in the team’s Agile process and ensure timely delivery of projects. You will own your team’s SLIs and SLOs and work with the SRE team, release management, monitoring and operations.
  • Communicate - You will be responsible for driving effective communication both within and outside the team. You will communicate with key stakeholders across the company to align on business goals to clearly articulate vision, goals and strategy for your team. You will update the stakeholders periodically on progress and blockers to keep various teams aligned.
  • Hire - You will proactively identify gaps and bottlenecks in the team. You will take an active role in recruiting, interviewing, and developing key talent.

Onboarding

In your first 30 days…

  • You will be immersed in an onboarding program that introduces you to Phaidra and our product.
  • You will read various parts of our handbook and familiarize yourself with the documentation culture at Phaidra.
  • You will take over meetings and processes from the current engineering manager to ramp up your responsibilities for the team.
  • You will familiarize yourself with our code, tools and processes in Engineering as well as the team specifically.
  • You will join the Engineering Leads meetings to get to know and integrate with your management and lead peers.
  • You will meet with the team members, other engineers, as well as stakeholders from other departments to understand challenges and opportunities.

In your first 60 days…

  • You will build a solid understanding of what Phaidra does and how we do it.
  • You will build an understanding of your team's services and operational aspects.
  • You will meet with team members across Phaidra and started building relationships that will help you be successful at your job.
  • You will learn how to manage the team's work and take project management responsibilities.
  • You will assist in creating and managing project and process documentation.
  • You will establish regular 1-on-1 with all team members and start to lead their career development.

In your first 90 days…

  • You will become proficient at navigating the processes and software tools to fully integrate into the Engineering department as well as the AI Platform team.
  • You will have begun to contribute on your own initiative representing your team as well as your own perspective.
  • You will be involved in the roadmap work and quarterly OKR planning for the team.
  • You will develop the knowledge and capability to fully represent the team within Phaidra.

Key Qualifications

  • 7+ years of work experience in software engineering, at least 2 years in a managerial role
  • Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science or a related field.
  • Prior experience successfully leading a team of engineers as an Engineering Manager solving complex technological problems in the domain of Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning.
  1. Either deep expertise in ML engineering and MLOps or production level Deep Reinforcement Learning.
  2. Experience building large scale multi-tenant systems with high availability, fault tolerance, performance tuning, monitoring, and statistics/metrics collection.
  3. Experience as a service owner of a realtime production system - thereby understanding the importance of monitoring, oncall and operations.
  4. Experience delivering solutions on the cloud or a combination of cloud and on-prem environments.
  • Strong understanding of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment.
  • Experience with hiring and performance management.
  • Knowledgeable about Agile/Scrum practices, and project management.
  • Excellent communicator, written and verbal, ability to work in an all-remote setting across timezones
  • Doing your work with curiosity, ownership, transparency & directness, outcome orientation, and customer empathy.

Bonus

  • Exposure to some industrial control systems and/or processes.
  • Product management experience

Our Stack

  • Languages - (Backend) Python, Go; (Frontend) JavaScript/TypeScript, React; Customer SDK & Clients - C# .NET
  • PyTorch
  • Cypress
  • Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform & Kapitan
  • Gitlab CI, ArgoCD, Atlantis, Vercel
  • GCP - GKE, PubSub, CloudSQL, BigTable, Postgres, etc.
  • Ray.io
  • REST & gRPC micro-services
  • Poetry, Pantsbuild

Base Salary

UK: £101,000-£136,000/year

This position will also include equity.

These are best faith estimates of the base salary range for this position. Multiple factors such as experience, education, level, and location are taken into account when determining compensation.

Benefits & Perks

  • Fast-paced and team-oriented environment where you will be instrumental in the direction of the company.
  • Phaidra is a 100% remote company with a digital nomad policy.
  • Competitive compensation & equity with an early exercise option.
  • Outsized responsibilities & professional development.
  • Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.
  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).
  • Unlimited paid time off, with a minimum of 20 days off per year requirement.
  • Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).
  • Home office setup stipend and company MacBook.
  • Monthly internet reimbursement.

On being Remote

We are thoughtful about remote collaboration. We look to the pioneers - like Gitlab - for inspiration and best practices to create a stellar remote work environment. We have a documentation-first culture and actively practice asynchronous communication in everything we do. Our team stays connected through tools like Slack and video chat. Most teams meet daily, and we have dedicated all-hands meetings bi-weekly to build strong relationships. We hold virtual team building events once per month - and even hold virtual socials to watch rocket launches! We have a yearly in-person, all-company summit in locations like Seattle, Athens, Goa, and Barcelona.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability, or any other legally protected status. We welcome diversity and strive to maintain an inclusive environment for all employees. If you need assistance with completing the application process, please contact us at hiring@phaidra.ai.

E-Verify Notice

Phaidra participates in E-Verify, an employment authorization database provided through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA). As required by law, we will provide the SSA and, if necessary, the DHS, with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization for those residing in the United States.

Additional information about E-Verify can be found here.

#LI-Remote

WE DO NOT ACCEPT APPLICATIONS FROM RECRUITERS.