Percepta Applied AI Engineer - Manager at Percepta managing a small team of engineers embedding AI solutions with customers. Balances coding and people management to deliver production AI systems in complex environments.
Responsibilities
We're hiring a player-coach Engineering Manager to help us grow our incredible engineers who are tackling our customers’ hardest problems.
Our Applied AI Engineers embed directly with customer teams. They own delivery, sit with operators and executives and ship production AI systems into environments nobody would describe as clean.
Everyone at Percepta is a builder, and you'll still be writing code. Expect to be in a codebase most weeks, reviewing designs, pairing on the gnarly parts, and stepping in directly when a launch is at risk. This isn't a coding-optional role. It’s a player-coach role because we strongly believe in staying close to the work. Your engineers are making architecture calls inside unfamiliar enterprise systems under real time pressure. It’s hard to do that from the outside, so you will have to be able to dig into the weeds when needed.
The balance shifts week to week. During a rollout you're closer to the code. Between rollouts you're closer to your people. Both are the job.
You'll partner with an Engagement Lead on customer strategy and with Growth Leads on each engineer's development, so you're not carrying the whole picture alone. You'll also be one of the leading voices on what Mosaic should become, because you'll be deeply embedded with the problems, and be intimately familiar with where the pain points are.
Grow engineers, deliberately. Have a real point of view on where each person is today and where they could be in 6 to 12 months, then aim their work at the overlap between what they're interested in, what they need to build, and what the business actually needs. Stretch assignments should be work that matters, not busywork dressed up as development.
Ramp people properly. Invest heavily up front: Learn about your direct reports, their learning and working style, how they operate, and how to best partner together. Get live context on the customer and the industry, heavily pairing in the first few weeks, co-attending every customer meeting for the first two (shadow, reverse shadow, then they lead). We want to make sure Percepta is the best place to work, and that there is unprecedented opportunity to grow a career here. Help your direct report learn their strengths, where to focus, and how to succeed in the ambiguity that is a high growth tech environment.
Give feedback in the moment. If a design approach is off or code quality is slipping, say so immediately, specifically and with respect. Bi-weekly 1:1s that go both directions. If someone has five things to work on, sequence them over months instead of dumping all five in one sitting.
Own the technical outcome. The buck stops with you across every workstream on your team, including the ones you delegated. Delegation is expected; abdication isn't. You should have enough context to know something is off before it becomes a crisis.
Make the hard technical calls. Be the final decision-maker on the choices that are expensive to reverse, and be clear when a decision has been made and who made it. Document the why. Decide with incomplete information when that's what's available, and say what you assumed.
Set the bar. Define your team's standards for code quality, testing, review rigor, and documentation. Unstated standards are just preferences people have to guess at. You don't need to review every PR, but review enough to know what's actually shipping.
Be credible with customers. You own the technical relationship. That trust gets built through consistent delivery and good questions, not through impressive decks. When something breaks, you're the grounding presence in the room.
Qualification
7+ years building production softwareA track record you can point atSystems tasteComfort operating in ambiguityReal product empathyDomain depth in healthcarePrior forward-deployedStartup or founding engineer backgroundLocation And TravelNew York based
Required
7+ years building production software, with at least 2 leading or managing engineers. Titles don’t matter: TLs who have been doing this work, please apply
You still write code and you want to keep writing code. Python and TypeScript specifically, since that's our stack and our interview loop
A track record you can point at: An engineer who got noticeably better because of how you managed them. Be specific about what changed
Systems taste. You can explain why a design is shaped the way it is, where it'll strain, and what you'd trade off. Opinionated beats default
Comfort operating in ambiguity, and the instinct to poke at unfamiliar systems rather than wait to be shown around
Real product empathy. You think about how people will actually use the thing, what it costs them to adopt it, and how to integrate without wrecking their workflow
Fluency with LLMs as an engineering surface: Agents, tools, context, evals, and the AI dev tooling your team uses daily
You can be direct with someone and have them come away trusting you more. Candor and kindness aren't in tension here
Strong communication with non-technical stakeholders. Lead with the answer, then the caveats
Preferred
Managed a team through a production launch inside someone else's enterprise environment
Domain depth in healthcare, energy, manufacturing, or financial services
Prior forward-deployed, consulting, or design partner work
Built tooling or frameworks that multiple teams depended on
Startup or founding engineer background
Location And Travel
New York based. Expect a couple of days a month on site with a customer, more when a deployment needs it or when someone on your team needs you in the room. We'd rather commit to that number and occasionally exceed it than advertise "minimal travel" and surprise you.
