Talent Toppers · 2 weeks ago
Founding Head of Engineering (AI / Agentic Systems)
San Francisco Bay Area
Full-time
Onsite
Director/Executive
7+ years expTalent Toppers is building the future of software quality assurance using AI-driven agentic systems. They are seeking a hands-on Head of Engineering to lead technology and people, architecting production-grade AI agents and scaling the engineering organization.
Human ResourcesRecruitingStaffing Agency
Hiring Manager
Shivali Hans
Responsibilities
Architect and build production-grade AI agent systems (hands-on coding daily)
Design agent behavior including planning, tool use, observation, learning, and failure recovery
Make key decisions around LLMs, orchestration, evaluation frameworks, and system reliability
Ensure agent reliability suitable for CI/CD and enterprise-grade QA
Establish engineering best practices, code quality standards, and tech debt management
Work directly with customers to translate real testing problems into product solutions
Build and scale the engineering team from the ground up
Hire, mentor, and develop engineers across AI and full-stack disciplines
Define lightweight processes that enable speed without sacrificing quality
Partner with founders on product strategy, roadmap, and go-to-market decisions
Shape company culture as a core member of the founding team
Qualification
Required
7+ years of software engineering experience with proven leadership
Experience building and shipping AI agents to production (beyond simple LLM wrappers)
Strong background in Python and/or TypeScript
Hands-on experience with LLM APIs and prompt engineering
Hands-on experience with function calling and tool integration
Hands-on experience with agent evaluation and reliability strategies
Experience building 0→1 products and scaling systems
Strong communication skills with customers, founders, and stakeholders
Ability to work onsite in San Francisco (4 days/week)
Preferred
Experience with browser automation (Playwright, Selenium)
Background in QA automation, testing, or developer tools
Knowledge of RAG, memory systems, planning frameworks, or multi-agent orchestration
Experience with multiple model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google)
Prior startup founding or executive engineering experience
Track record scaling teams from under 5 to 20+ engineers
Benefits
Generous equity
Company
Talent Toppers
Talent Toppers is a human resource firm that provides talent supply and talent management solutions.
51-200 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageCompany data provided by crunchbase