Senior Engineering Manager - AI Agents at captivateiq

CaptivateIQ is transforming the way companies plan, manage, and optimize sales performance. We started by revolutionizing incentive compensation management, and now we're expanding our platform to solve broader sales planning challenges. Recognized by industry analysts like Forrester and G2 and backed by top-tier investors, including Sequoia, ICONIQ, Accel, and Sapphire Ventures,  we empower high-growth companies like Netflix, Figma, and Stripe with the flexibility and insights needed to drive revenue performance.   About the Role Behind every great software company is the team building it. We are an engineering team of multicultural, highly collaborative, fully distributed, humble learners. We pride ourselves on building best-in-class products powered by innovative technologies.   As a Senior Engineering Manager in the Incentive Commission Plans (ICM) pillar, you will lead product teams focused on the Plan Builder persona: the administrators, compensation practitioners, and sales ops leaders who design, iterate on, and operationalize complex incentive plans.   You will own a high‑impact portfolio spanning plan design, modeling, workflows, and plan documentation experiences. Your teams will make it easy for plan builders to go from idea → modeled plan → approved plan → signed plan document and live configuration, while ensuring accuracy, auditability, and scale. You will partner closely with Product, Design, and platform and application teams in an API- and platform-first environment.   This role is a strong fit if you’ve spent the last several years leading engineering teams, enjoy working at the intersection of product strategy, architecture, and operations, and are excited by building deeply powerful but approachable tools for expert users with complex workflows.   Job Location The candidate selected for this opportunity must reside near one of the following locations:   Hybrid (in-office 3 days per week) Menlo Park, CA Austin, TX   Remote Raleigh, NC  Nashville, TN  Toronto, Canada   Responsibilities • Lead, inspire, and grow a distributed engineering team, fostering a culture of high trust, psychological safety, and intellectual curiosity. • Develop engineering talent through effective coaching, mentorship, and performance management, with a focus on growing senior and staff-level engineers. • Own the end-to-end delivery and operational excellence of the AI platform, ensuring AI systems are reliable, safe, and performant in production. • Partner with Product, Design, and other cross-functional leaders to set a clear vision, prioritize roadmaps, and align a long-term strategy that optimizes for the entire organization. • Be a key voice in shaping CaptivateIQ's broader AI strategy, informing how AI capabilities are adopted and integrated across the product. • Provide technical leadership and direction by setting architectural guardrails and guiding major technical decisions without being a direct code contributor. • Drive AI adoption standards and best practices that enable product teams across the company to build AI-powered features using the platform your team provides. • Staff projects strategically and plan for long-term headcount and recruiting needs to set the organization up for sustained success. Requirements • Extensive software development experience as an individual contributor, and a proven track record as an Engineering Manager leading distributed software engineering teams. • Hands-on experience building and shipping AI-powered products in production — LLM orchestration, agent frameworks, or applied ML systems. You understand the unique engineering challenges of AI systems (evaluation, non-determinism, cost, latency) and can guide teams through them. • Broad understanding of the state of the art in AI, LLMs, and applied LLM systems. You stay current with the latest developments, know what the industry has to offer, and bring that context to every strategic and technical decision. • A strategic thinker, comfortable setting technical vision over a 6-12 month horizon and managing a complex portfolio of projects. • A strong product sense and a proven track record of delivering high-quality results across the full product lifecycle, with the ability to connect technical investments to customer and business outcomes. • Proven ability to influence technical direction beyond your own team — you've shaped how other teams build, not just your own. • A track record of hiring and developing senior talent, with a passion for helping engineers advance their careers. • Exceptional interpersonal and written communication skills, with a proven ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional partners in a remote-first environment. • High sense of ownership and a strong growth mindset; you are a collaborative, humble learner who can adapt strategy when the landscape shifts or results aren't moving the needle. Bonus points • Experience leading AI platform or internal developer tools teams that serve other engineering teams as customers. • Hands-on experience with LLM orchestration frameworks, MCP integrations, or agent SDK design. • Background in building AI evaluation and observability infrastructure. • Experience in B2B SaaS, particularly in enterprise software with complex domain logic. • Familiarity with Python/Django tech stack. • Familiarity with sales performance management, incentive compensation, or adjacent enterprise domains. Benefits • Comprehensive Healthcare: 100% coverage for medical, dental, and vision for all FTEs, with roughly 75% coverage for dependents. • Flexible Time Off: Flexible vacation days plus quarterly mental health days to ensure you have the space to recharge. • Annual Stipends: Dedicated funds for your professional development and caretaking needs. • Work Anniversary Bonuses: Annual bonuses to celebrate your milestones and contributions to the CaptivateIQ team that grow as your tenure does. • Retirement Savings (US-Only): A 401(k) plan to help you invest in and secure your future. • Premium Tools: The latest Apple hardware to empower you to do your best work. • Inclusive Community: Active Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that celebrate shared identities and support our DEI goals by fostering an environment where diverse talent thrives. Notice to Prospective Candidates • Only emails from @captivateiq.com should be trusted. • We are aware of active recruitment scams using the CaptivateIQ name, in which individuals pose as our recruiters and post fake remote job openings and make fake job offers on the Internet. Please note, we will never do the following: • Attempt to correspond with a candidate using a free web-based account, such as an email address that ends in @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com, etc. • Make an offer of employment without conducting multiple rounds of interviews face-to-face using secure video-conferencing technology. • Ask candidates to cash checks to buy equipment on behalf of CaptivateIQ. • Ask candidates to make a payment in order to be considered for a position. • Make early requests for candidates' personal information such as date of birth, passport details, credit card numbers, bank details and social security number, etc. • Please note that we’ll only ask for more sensitive personal information in connection with background checks after an offer is made. • Participate in an on-call rotation to provide after-hours support, ensuring timely resolution of critical issues and maintaining system uptime. CaptivateIQ participates in E-Verify, web-based system that allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States