Senior Engineering Manager, AI (Technical Team Lead)

Location: Remote - Brazil or Colombia (LatAm) 

Type: Full-time 

Working hours: Must be willing to work Pacific Time (PT) business hours. Brazil is ~4/5 hours ahead of PT and Colombia ~2/3 hours ahead; comfortable overlap with a Pacific-based team is required.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Senior Engineering Manager who is, first and foremost, a hands-on technical leader. You will lead a small team building custom AI and data solutions for enterprise clients, and you will stay deep in the work: operating on data, organizing the technical stack, setting up infrastructure, and personally delivering when a project is on the line.

This role blends real engineering skill with people and project leadership. If a project has to ship and you are the person available to ship it, you are able to do so end to end. We operate like a rapid-iteration startup: schedules are urgent, expectations are high, and the people who thrive here are excited by that pace.

What We're Looking For

The three qualities that matter most for this role:

1. Ownership and drive. You take on more than your role strictly requires. You are prolific, high-energy, and responsive when the business needs you. You treat delivery deadlines as your own and prioritize the urgent, important work on your schedule.
2. Technical competence. You are genuinely hands-on. You can code yourself, operate the data, organize the technical stack, and set up infrastructure. You guide the team on architecture, design, and implementation, and you can step in and build when it counts.
3. People and organizational leadership. You run tight, well-organized engineering execution: clear technical specs, well-scoped tasks, and consistent on-time (or ahead-of-time) delivery. You have led teams through urgent, high-stakes schedules and delivered.

Key Responsibilities

Hands-on delivery and technical leadership

• Own end-to-end project delivery, stepping in personally to build, operate data, configure the stack, or set up infrastructure whenever needed.
• Guide the team on architecture, design, and implementation of scalable, maintainable solutions.
• Run precise engineering planning: define technical specs, scope tasks clearly, and drive execution to consistent on-time delivery.

Team and workstream management

• Lead and organize a team building custom AI/data solutions for enterprise clients.
• Allocate work across the team based on skills and performance, and prioritize to meet business goals.
• Coordinate with cross-functional partners to keep projects aligned.

Throughput, quality, and iteration

• Monitor progress and optimize development processes for speed and efficiency in a fast, iterative environment.
• Perform spot reviews on tasks, give actionable feedback, and catch risks early.
• Ensure work meets quality standards before it ships.

Talent and performance

• Identify high and low performers through reviews and metrics; mentor, develop, and manage talent accordingly.
• Build up team members and support their growth toward more advanced work.

Qualifications

• Proven track record of leading teams, especially in startup or fast-moving, project-based environments, delivering complex technical work under tight deadlines. This is the primary filter.
• Hands-on technical strength — expert-level, current engineering ability (e.g., Python and JavaScript ecosystems), with the ability to personally deliver.
• Data fluency — proficiency with data analysis and data quality practices (statistical analysis, data manipulation, and tools such as Pandas, NumPy, and SQL), and the ability to lead data validation, cleansing, and enrichment.
• 7+ years in software engineering, with at least 2 years leading a team (typically 5-6+ people).
• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Backgrounds in AI, data science, or data engineering are strongly preferred; 
• AI or fine-tuning / custom-data experience is a plus but not required — diligence, track record, and ownership come first.
• Excellent communication and the ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams.

What Success Looks Like

You are the kind of leader who is excited to do this work. You know it will be intense, that you'll manage a lot of people, process, and technology at once, and you welcome it. You have taken on something genuinely hard, led people through it, and can clearly explain what made it difficult and how you delivered — a truly hard technical milestone, reached in a leadership setting, that you're proud of.