Engineering Manager

we're looking for great people to join our experienced team of former Firebase, AWS, Meta and Square engineers and operators.

About Us Ampersand was founded in 2022 by Ayan Barua and Lauren Long - two engineers and repeat founders with a rare combination of developer tools and SaaS experience. You can learn more about our full team here . We've raised Series A funding from top-tier investors known for their early-stage bets on generational companies like Anthropic, Apple, Twilio, Supabase, and Vercel.

Together, we believe: - This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build the connectivity infrastructure for AI. Seizing this moment requires passion, hard work, and continuous learning. At the same time, this is a marathon, not a sprint. - Velocity comes from great strategic decisions, not doing the 99 things you don't have to do. - In five core values that shape how we work every day: Craft, Customer Empathy, Ownership Mindset, Velocity, and Humility.

The Role We're looking for an inaugural Engineering Manager to join a fast-growing AI infrastructure company at a pivotal moment. You'll work directly with the founders and a small, high-retention engineering team, including people who came up through Google, Meta, Cruise, and AWS and have chosen to stay. The culture here is intentional: high craft, high trust, and high ownership.

Your job is to protect that while scaling it. This is a hands-on role. You'll be close to the technical work, close to the people doing it, and close to the decisions that shape how the team grows.

You will report directly to the co-founder and CTO, and this position has the opportunity to grow into a Director or VP of Engineering role down the road. What You'll Own - Engineering Leadership - Mentor and grow a high-performing team across full-stack, customer, and forward-deployed engineering. Run regular 1:1s, give clear feedback, and build the conditions where engineers do their best work and stay. - Team Scaling - Own onboarding for new engineers so they ramp quickly and become productive.

Partner with founders on hiring and career development as the org grows beyond its founding core. - Technical Execution - Spend at least 20% of your time doing IC work - staying close to the codebase and tooling. Drive project management for customer deliverables, especially work that spans multiple engineers or product areas. - Engineering Acceleration - Create the environment and infrastructure for engineers to ship fast: code maintainability, internal documentation, development workflows, QA tools and automation.

Lead by example on AI-accelerated development - advocate for using AI to improve velocity while maintaining reliability and quality. - Security & Compliance - Own security and compliance alongside our Founding Operations Lead, including SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR. - Distributed Collaboration - Manage project-based contract engineers and globally distributed connector contributors.

What You'll Bring - Significant software engineering experience, including 2+ years leading engineering teams in a startup or high-growth environment (even if you didn't hold a formal Manager title) - You've led teams through complex technical initiatives and are excited to do it again - Strong technical judgment - you can go deep on architecture and system design when it matters - You build engineering culture and systems: ownership, craft, and accountability are things you've actually installed somewhere before - Excellent written communication; the team is async-first and decisions travel in writing - You have directly interfaced with customers before, and enjoy having close lines of communication with the people you build for - Experience with Go, TypeScript, React, or similar stacks is a plus - Background in developer tools, APIs, infrastructure platforms, or AI-native products is preferred The Perks - Competitive salary and equity - Medical, dental, and vision insurance - Free lunch on in-office days (Mon/Tue/Thu) - 401(k) with company match, commuter benefits, HSA - Up to 4 weeks PTO - Team socials and retreats