VP of Engineering (Must be based in New York)

As VP of Engineering, you’ll own the growth and performance of PolyAI’s engineering organisation, ensuring we can scale from tens of engineers to hundreds while maintaining world-class product velocity, technical quality, and reliability. You will bring experience from high-growth environments, where ARR and team sizes expanded rapidly, and apply those learnings to PolyAI’s journey as we scale from $10M+ to $100M+ ARR. You’ll oversee engineering teams focused on product development, scalability, and reliability. Creating an environment where engineers thrive, innovate, and deliver at speed. You’ll balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery, guiding architectural choices while keeping a sharp eye on execution and outcomes. This is a leadership role, but one where curiosity, experimentation, and technical credibility matter. While you won’t need to be hands-on day to day, your ability to prototype, explore emerging technologies, and engage with modern architectures will inspire the team and help us stay at the cutting edge.

What you’ll be doing:

• Lead and grow PolyAI’s engineering organisation from tens to hundreds of engineers across multiple disciplines and geographies
• Build and scale engineering management systems - performance management, hiring, onboarding, and development - to ensure teams are effective, motivated, and high-performing
• Partner closely with Product leadership to align engineering execution with company strategy and goals
• Guide architectural decisions with a focus on scalable, modern, and resilient design (cloud-native on AWS and Azure, microservices, and beyond)
• Drive an appropriate balance between delivery velocity and managing technical debt
• Build and oversee engineering teams dedicated to product development, scalability, and reliability, ensuring collaboration across disciplines
• Support the adoption of emerging technologies - from new languages and frameworks to agentic architecture, vibe coding, and other machine learning systems - evaluating pros and cons with a critical eye
• Foster a culture of curiosity, iteration, and reinvention, encouraging the organisation to re-examine and evolve processes and technologies every 6 - 12 months
• Build strong team culture across distributed settings (hybrid in-person and remote), spanning multiple nationalities and working styles

We’d love to hear from you if you have:

• Experience scaling engineering organisations from ~20 to 200+ engineers, including managing managers and directors
• A track record of leading in high-growth SaaS environments (2-3x ARR growth year on year, scaling from ~$10M to $100M+)
• Deep experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS and Azure), modern architecture design, and distributed systems at scale
• Familiarity with our core languages and technologies (Python, JavaScript/Node.js, Go); experience evaluating and introducing new stacks a plus
• Understanding of machine learning systems and how to design engineering infrastructure around them
• The ability to navigate tradeoffs between speed and quality, balancing technical debt against delivery velocity
• Experience building and running engineering organisations in hybrid settings (part in-person, part remote), with multi-national teams and cultures
• Strong leadership presence: personable, clear communicator, and skilled at building trust across functions and levels

Bonus points if you:

• Have experience experimenting with or deploying agentic architectures, and can speak to their tradeoffs
• Enjoy prototyping or hacking on side projects to demonstrate ideas or inspire the team
• Have worked closely with voice AI, conversational AI, or ML-heavy products

We provide a competitive salary range for this role, which is $300,000-$400,000 + Bonus and Equity (depending on level and experience). Please note this range is intended as a guide - not a guarantee. Final compensation will be based on individual qualifications, relevant experience, and the scope of the role.

Benefits
💰 Participation in the company’s employee share options plan
🏥 100% of Single Cost (employee) and 70% of Dependent for medical, dental & vision
👪 Life Insurance
◻️ STD and LTD
💰 The opportunity to contribute to the company's 401k plan
🏝 Flexible PTO policy + 11 designated company holidays
📚 Annual learning and development allowance
🏡 One-off WFH allowance when you join
🧡 Enhanced parental leave
👨‍👩‍👧 Company-funded fertility and family-forming programs
🌸 Menopause care program with Maven