Manager I, Applied AI - Distilled Models

What you'll do

• Lead and develop a team of engineers and applied scientists focused on specialized models and AI security.
• Define technical direction and make deliberate decisions on which projects to pursue, pivot, or stop.
• Manage the end-to-end delivery of high-quality AI systems from research exploration to production-grade reliability.
• Balance quality, latency, cost, and safety considerations when shipping AI-powered products.
• Establish evaluation pipelines and metrics to measure system quality and detect model drift.
• Partner with product managers and research teams to shape project goals based on customer problems.
• Coach team members through feedback and foster a culture of experimentation and innovation.
• Participate in hiring and talent development to scale the AI organization.

What we're looking for

• Experience leading and mentoring engineers and applied scientists in a fast-moving domain.
• Deep expertise in areas such as LLMs, RAG, semantic search, agentic systems, deep learning, or NLP.
• Proficiency in evaluation methodologies for AI systems, including both offline benchmarks and online metrics.
• Ability to anchor early-stage work in customer problems and define success criteria before development.
• Experience taking AI products from 0 to 1 by scoping hypotheses and making deliberate decisions on project direction.
• Ability to manage the trade-offs between quality, latency, cost, and safety for AI systems.
• BS/MS/PhD in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.