VP of Platform Engineering - Agentic AI (San Francisco) (San Francisco, CA)
Summary
Player-coach VP of Platform Engineering who builds and leads a ~4-engineer platform team while staying hands-on in code, owning the AI-native platform core (agent runtime, LLM orchestration, retrieval, evals) at a Series A agentic AI fintech. Built with TypeScript/Python; on-site in San Francisco.
VP of Platform Engineering
About this role
We are looking for a VP of Platform Engineering with 10+ years of experience to own and scale the AI-native platform core at a profitable, Series A agentic AI company serving hundreds of financial institutions. This is a player-coach role — you'll build and lead the platform engineering org while staying hands-on in the code, partnering directly with the CTO and CEO on architecture, product releases, and new initiatives.
What will you be doing?
- Managing and growing the existing platform engineering team (~4 engineers today, expanding) while remaining deeply hands-on in code and architecture
- Working directly with the CEO and CTO daily on product releases and new platform initiatives being built from scratch
- Owning the AI-native platform core end-to-end — agent runtime, LLM orchestration, retrieval systems, evals, integrations, and the agent-authoring platform
- Driving velocity, quality, and reliability across all platform domains including tooling, eval gates, and observability
- Scaling the platform org and its engineering culture through the company's next stage of growth
Key Requirements
- 10+ years of engineering experience with 4–6 years in leadership; must have scaling experience (revenue, funding stages, team growth)
- Production-scale experience in AI/agentic systems, LLM/ML infrastructure, or conversational/voice AI — working on the platform side
- Hands-on and still technical — must be actively coding, reviewing PRs, and making architecture calls (not a pure people manager)
- Startup experience strongly preferred (Series A–D); open to strong VP-level candidates from big tech if they show exceptional career trajectory
- Must be on-site in San Francisco 5 days/week; BS/BA in Computer Science required
- 10 - 16 years of experience as a platform engineer
Tech stack
- TypeScript, Python, LLMs, Agentic AI, Distributed Systems, Cloud Architecture, ML Infrastructure, LLM Orchestration, Retrieval Systems, API Design
About the company
Our client is an AI-native fintech building agentic AI for community banks and credit unions across the US. One AI platform delivers a unified experience across voice, digital and employee-assisted channels, powered by a single AI brain that continuously learns and operates autonomously.