Agave The Engineering Manager at Agave leads a team of full-stack engineers building AI and agent products for the construction industry. This role requires hands-on technical leadership and collaboration with customers in a fast-growing startup.
Responsibilities
tl;dr: Fresh off a $15M Series A led by Accel (total funding now $20M+), Agave is experiencing hockey-stick growth. We’re looking for a world-class engineering manager who still loves to build. You’ll lead a team of strong full-stack engineers shipping AI and agent products on top of IC work yourself.
In-person: This role is in-person from our office in San Francisco 5 days per week.
Agave builds applied AI for construction, a $12T global industry run on financial software built 20-50 years ago, much of it on-premise with no APIs and no documentation.
We spent 4 years building proprietary rails that read and write across those systems. Our AI agents run on those rails and take over the back-office work contractors still do by hand: invoice matching, expenses, compliance, billing, and financial reporting. Contractors keep the systems they already use; our agents work across them.
550+ contractors run on Agave, including teams building hyperscaler data centers, mass transit systems, and other critical infrastructure. We're backed by Accel and Y Combinator, who both reinvested in our $15M Series A, plus execs from Procore, Autodesk, PlanGrid, and Plaid.
Qualification
A strong IC who wants to stay oneHas led projects with other engineersSelf-motivatedIf in Bay AreaNo need to haveWhat we expect from youSpend 50-60% of your time as an ICLead a team of 4-6 engineers
Required
4+ years as a back-end/full-stack engineer, including 1+ years managing or leading engineers (as a manager, or as a tech lead with mentoring responsibility).
A strong IC who wants to stay one: you’ve designed and built production systems yourself, with real experience in cloud infrastructure (e.g. AWS) and distributed systems.
Has debugged hard production issues end-to-end: DB performance, memory, concurrency, third-party API failures.
Has led projects with other engineers: scoped the work, split it across the team, and delivered it.
Has mentored engineers and given direct feedback, including the hard conversations.
Can explain tradeoffs to founders and customers, not just engineers.
Self-motivated, high ownership, low ego; desire to work on a fast-paced, intense, fun team. Passion for building a world-class engineering culture.
If in Bay Area: pumped to work in-person with us in SF 5 days/week. This role is remote optional for candidates outside of the Bay Area.
No need to have: prior experience with our tech stack or with construction.
What we expect from you
Spend 50-60% of your time as an IC: shipping code and owning the hardest technical problems on your team.
Lead a team of 4-6 engineers: 1:1s, feedback, performance, and career growth.
