Engineering Manager, Applied AI

Compa

84d

About The Position

Compa is looking for an Engineering Manager to build and lead our first Applied AI Team. This is a unique opportunity to own and shape how we apply machine learning across both customer-facing products and internal systems. You’ll operate as a player-coach—contributing hands-on to ML projects while building a high-performing team from the ground up. You'll work closely with Compa’s Co-founder & CTO to define the team’s technical vision, processes, and success metrics. You’ll collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, CS, and Design to identify high-impact opportunities and ship production-grade ML systems that support comp decisions at the world’s most sophisticated companies. You’ll be responsible for end-to-end ownership of applied AI initiatives, including model development, MLOps, roadmap planning, infrastructure alignment, and organizational process design.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience as a technical lead or manager on ML or Applied AI teams.
• Proven experience shipping production ML models in customer-facing or business-critical applications.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and a builder mindset.
• Familiarity with modern ML tooling, MLOps practices, and model evaluation pipelines.
• Experience collaborating with Product Managers and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Strong communication and leadership skills.
• Ability to create and scale process, tooling, and team practices in a fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building ML systems in a startup or zero-to-one context.
• Experience partnering with Infrastructure and Data Engineering teams.
• Knowledge of compensation, HR tech, or enterprise SaaS workflows.
• Exposure to agentic systems, predictive modeling, or real-time data products.
• Familiarity with vendor selection, cost planning, or cloud architecture decisions related to ML.
• A track record of mentoring or developing engineering talent.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead the Applied AI Team.
• Contribute hands-on to machine learning projects.
• Define the team’s technical vision, processes, and success metrics in collaboration with the Co-founder & CTO.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to identify high-impact opportunities.
• Ship production-grade ML systems that support compensation decisions.
• Own end-to-end applied AI initiatives, including model development and MLOps.
• Plan roadmaps and align infrastructure for applied AI projects.
• Design organizational processes for the Applied AI Team.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior