Head of Engineering

About Zania

Zania is building AI agents for enterprise governance, risk, and compliance teams to execute complex workflows with full explainability. Series A, $18M raised from NEA, Anthropic, and Menlo Ventures. Founded by a former founding security engineer at Airbnb and builder of Microsoft Security Copilot. We're not building another dashboard — we're replacing entire workflows with agents that do the work.

Why this role exists

We need a Head of Engineering who will own engineering end-to-end: architecture decisions, hiring, shipping cadence, and team culture. This is not a "manage managers" role. This is a hands-on technical leader who scales the team from ~5 to 20+ engineers in the next 12 months while personally ensuring the product is world-class.

What we're looking for — non-negotiables

1. Builder first, manager second.
2. Founder DNA.
3. Proven ability to scale a team from small to 20+.
4. AI-native mindset.
5. Shipping velocity as a core value.
6. Deep, not wide.

What you'll do

• Own all engineering output: product quality, velocity, reliability, and security.
• Build the engineering team from current size to 15–20 in 12 months. Personally involved in every hire.
• Set and enforce a shipping culture — weekly demos, continuous deployment, minimal process overhead.
• Partner directly with the CEO on product direction, prioritization, and customer-facing technical conversations.
• Architect and evolve the platform (LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, compliance automation) for enterprise scale.
• Establish lightweight but real engineering practices: CI/CD, observability, on-call, code review standards.

Signals we look for

• Founded or co-founded a technical startup (even if it didn't work out).
• Scaled an eng team through a Series A/B at a product-led company.
• Has shipped AI/ML products to production — not research, not POCs.
• Deep in the Bay Area engineering community — knows who to call.
• Background in security, infrastructure, or enterprise SaaS is a plus.
• Has operated in a domain where correctness matters (fintech, security, health, compliance).

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a technical leadership or founding engineering role at a product-led company
• Demonstrated experience scaling an engineering team from small to 20+ engineers, with a proven ability to hire, develop, and retain senior technical talent
• Deep, hands-on experience shipping AI/ML or agentic systems to production at enterprise scale
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — you will partner directly with the CEO and represent engineering in customer-facing technical conversations

Comp

Significant equity + competitive cash — structured to attract a builder, not a caretaker. Reports directly to CEO.

How to apply

Email [email protected] or apply through our careers page.