Engineering Manager, Frontier AI Infrastructure - Public Sector

You will:

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of engineers — own hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development.
• Set technical direction and quarterly priorities for the inference layer, and hold the team accountable to delivery on customer and contract commitments.
• Run the operational rhythm of the team: sprint planning, on-call rotation, incident review, and postmortems.
• Partner with Product, Program, and Deployed Engineering leadership to translate customer and mission requirements into roadmap.
• Represent the team in customer engagements and vendor escalations, including with government stakeholders.
• Design and implement secure, scalable backend systems for Public Sector customers, leveraging Scale's modern cloud-native AI infrastructure.
• Own services and systems alongside your team, define their long-term health goals, and improve the health of surrounding components.
• Stay in the code: review PRs, debug production issues, and take on meaningful technical work yourself.

Must have:

• At least 1-2+ years of direct people management experience leading a team of software engineers (hiring, performance management, and career development), plus a strong track record as a hands-on individual contributor.
• At least an active Secret clearance, and the ability and willingness to up-level to TS/SCI with CI Poly. This is a requirement and candidates will not be considered who do not hold at least a Secret clearance.
• Willingness to remain hands-on in the code — this is not a purely people-leadership role.

Ideally you'd have:

• Full Stack Development: Proficiency in both front-end and back-end development, including modern web frameworks, programming languages, and databases. Experience developing and delivering software to air-gapped and isolated environments is a plus.
• Cloud-Native Technologies: Understanding of containerization (e.g., Docker) and orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes). Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and experience developing and deploying applications in cloud-native environments.
• Security Focused: Experience with federal compliance frameworks and requirements (e.g., Cloud SRG, FedRAMP, STIG Benchmarks). Experience delivering software and technical solutions that meet strict security and regulatory requirements.
• Team Building: Experience building or scaling a team from a small size, and setting engineering standards (code review, testing, on-call) that stick.
• Problem Solving: Strong analytical skills to understand complex challenges and devise effective solutions. Ability to think critically, identify root causes, and propose innovative approaches to technical obstacles.
• Collaboration and Communication: Excellent interpersonal and communication skills to collaborate with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and customers. Ability to clearly articulate technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Adaptability and Learning Agility: Willingness to embrace new technologies, learn new skills, and adapt to evolving requirements in a fast-moving AI landscape.
• Must be able to support work 3–4 days a week from the DC office.