Vice President of Engineering

The Mandate: Execute at Scale, Lead with Depth $32M ARR | Bootstrapped | Elite Technical Operator Location: San Francisco, CA (In-Person/Hybrid – Non-Negotiable) Reports to: CEO (Manick Bhan) The Mission: Scale the Engine from $32M to $100M ARR Your Arena: Two-Mode Leadership Mode 1: Technical Gravitas & Architecture (40% High-Leverage Execution) Guardian of the Critical Path: You aren’t shipping routine tickets, but you own the final architectural blueprint. When our Celery task architecture needs to scale to billions of background jobs, you design the solution. Code Review Authority: You set the gold standard. Your presence in PR reviews isn’t to micromanage, but to ensure distributed systems anti-patterns and N+1 queries never see the light of production. Forensics & Resilience: When the system faces extreme load, you lead the diagnosis. You use Datadog, Sentry, and Grafana as forensic tools to maintain sub-100ms latency across our agentic stack. Mode 2: Engineering Velocity & Culture (60% Organizational Scaling) Elite Operations: Evolve our 100+ engineer organization into a world-class unit. You implement processes that increase velocity by removing friction, not by adding bureaucracy. TDD, CI/CD, and trunk-based development are your religion. Leader of Leaders: Mentor Tech Leads and Principal Engineers through action. Your team should grow faster by watching you solve a "hard" problem on a whiteboard than they would in a year of seminars. Talent Magnet: Build a culture that the top 1% of SF engineers quit their jobs to join. You know how to identify "operators" and filter out "tourists" within a 15-minute conversation. The Technical Reality (The Stack You Own) Backend: Python 3, Django REST Framework, Celery (Async processing at massive scale). Data: PostgreSQL (Transactional optimization), ClickHouse (Analytics), Elasticsearch (Search), Redis. Infra: Kubernetes, Docker, Microservices—managing terabytes of data and sub-100ms latency requirements. AI/ML: LLM orchestration, agentic systems architecture, and vector databases in production environments. Who You Are The Profile: 10+ years of shipping production code, with 3+ years leading organizations of 50+ engineers. You have the title of a VP but the current, sharp skills of a Staff Engineer. Proven Track Record: You’ve successfully scaled SaaS platforms from $20M to $100M+ ARR in capital-efficient environments. Shipping Obsession: You measure cycle time, deployment frequency, and MTTR. You hate waste and love aggressive iteration. SF-Based: You understand that high-bandwidth leadership happens in person. You thrive in whiteboard wars and rapid, face-to-face iteration. The Partnership & Compensation The Package (SF 2026 Executive Standard): Base: $200,000 – $425,000+ (Based on technical depth and leadership track record). Equity: Meaningful ownership in a profitable, high-growth, bootstrapped rocket ship. Benefits: Premium Health/Dental/Vision, Unlimited PTO, Paid Parental Leave. The "Edge": Company-paid Lasik (visual clarity for the mission), $500/quarter professional development budget, and a zero-politics environment. The Culture: Ship-or-Die Velocity: We deploy daily. We optimize hourly. Ownership Cult: Engineers own features end-to-end. We don’t have "project managers" to shield you; we have owners who ship. Radical Candor: Direct feedback, brutal honesty, and extremely high expectations. Recruitment Process Technical Calibration: 45-min deep dive into distributed systems and architecture. Leadership & Scale: System design under pressure + organizational scaling strategy. Founder Session: Technical sparring with Manick Bhan on the future of Agentic AI. The Offer: We move fast for the right person. How We Work Hybrid in San Francisco 2-3 days/week in-office for deep collaboration and whiteboarding Flexible remote days for focused research and coding Our Rhythm Weekly model releases, continuous research, constant measurement. End-to-end ownership: you build it, you ship it, you monitor it. Direct access to founders and executive team. Our Culture Autonomy: We hire experts and trust them to make decisions. Impact: Every model connects to business outcomes. Craft: We value scientific rigor and elegant engineering. About Search Atlas We build autonomous marketing software for Fortune 500s and high-growth startups: OTTO SEO - Fully autonomous technical optimization Content Genius - Semantic AI content generation Site Explorer - Real-time search intelligence BrandVault - AI-driven knowledge graphs GBP Galactic - Local SEO automation Smart Ads - Autonomous PPC management Recognition: Inc. 5000, Nevada's #1 Small Business Workplace, Great Place to Work Certified $32M ARR. Bootstrapped. Profitable. Growing fast. Search Atlas is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all team members. Apply with evidence of craft. No cover letters. Just systems, code, and results. Must be currently authorized to work in the US without future sponsorship. #J-18808-Ljbffr