Space Executive is partnering with one of the country's leading VC firms, who is giving us early visibility into a Head of Engineering search across their Data & AI stealth portfolio. We're currently hiring for a Series A start-up, focusing on a highly regulated industry.
If you're a Head of Engineering (or Director/VP-level engineer ready for that step up) with a background in data infrastructure, ML, or AI-native products, we'd like to hear from you. Beyond this specific search, we work closely with several VC firms across their wider portfolios, so we're always happy to have a broader conversation about what's out there if the timing or fit isn't quite right here.
What You'll Own
- Engineering Strategy & Execution - Own the technical roadmap and delivery for a data/AI-native product, balancing speed with the foundations needed to scale past Series A/B/C
- Team Building & Leadership - Hire, structure, and lead an engineering org (including ML/data specialists) through a period of real growth, likely 2x-4x headcount over 12-18 months
- Architecture & Technical Decisions - Stay close to the data platform, model infrastructure, and pipelines; make (or unmake) the calls that determine whether the system scales cleanly
- Cross-Functional Partnership - Work directly with the CEO/CTO and product leadership to align engineering output with company strategy, data strategy, and fundraising milestones
- Process & Culture - Build the engineering practices (planning, code review, on-call, model evaluation, hiring bar) that don't exist yet, without over-engineering for a company at this stage
- Hands-On When It Matters - Staff-plus mindset; comfortable reviewing designs, unblocking incidents, or writing code (or a training pipeline) when the team needs it
Who You Are
- Strong hands-on engineering background; you've written and shipped production code, ideally with exposure to data pipelines, ML systems, or applied AI
- Experience leading and growing engineering teams (1-20+ engineers) at a startup or scale-up
- Have operated at Series A-C before, ideally through a stage transition; comfortable with ambiguity and building process from scratch
- Confident partnering with founders and non-technical stakeholders; can translate technical and data/model tradeoffs into business terms
- Comfortable operating under NDA during a stealth phase before the company's identity or product is public
Why This Role
Strong early signal, funding in place, and a technical leadership gap that needs filling before the next stage of growth.
Interested, or want to talk more broadly about opportunities across our VC network? Reach out to register your interest confidentially.
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