Engineering Manager

Speak • San Francisco, CA

8d • Onsite

About The Position

We're looking for experienced Engineering Managers to lead critical engineering teams at Speak - the world's leading AI-powered language learning app. This is an extraordinary moment to join us: we're in the middle of a fundamental agentic shift in software development, and are embracing the change.
You'll lead engineers working on some of the most compelling problems in consumer AI, from building realtime voice AI systems to designing LLM orchestration platforms that power millions of personalized learning conversations to scaling inference infrastructure across global markets. The technical surface area is deep, spanning custom ML models, voice agent platforms, LLM tooling, and production infrastructure.
As an EM at Speak, you’ll also be a key driver of our agentic engineering transformation, helping your team evolve from "using AI to code faster" to designing the systems, environments, and feedback loops that enable agents to do increasingly autonomous, high-quality work. We believe this shift is creating a massive and widening gap between teams that fully embrace it and those that don't, and we're building for the former.
As part of this, we’re looking for EMs that are excited to use coding agents to get close to the metal again, stay deeply in the details of your team's work, and lead by example.

Requirements

• 8+ years of IC software engineering experience on fast-paced, high performance teams
• 4+ years of direct team management experience
• Strong backend, systems, platform/infra, or performance background
• Deeply technical and building faster than ever with coding agents
• High agency but low ego
• Strong conviction that 10x engineering output is possible with agentic tools and practices
• Proven ability to drive velocity, hold a high quality bar, and give direct performance feedback
• Excited about working in-person in San Francisco at least 3-4 days per week

Nice To Haves

• Background in AI-native products and systems
• Track record of driving org-wide developer productivity or tooling initiatives

Responsibilities

• Leading and managing a team of engineers while setting strong output and productivity expectations
• Contributing technically, both through coaching and leadership as well as directly contributing: e.g. shipping smaller projects, bugfixes, and improving the agent environment using coding agents
• Driving your team's agentic engineering transformation: constantly asking what's still being done manually, identifying slowdowns and roadblocks, and actively closing the gap
• Setting the pace and driving velocity while articulating and setting a high quality bar
• Collaborating closely and effectively with partner functions like Product/Design/many more to execute effectively in the AI era
• Proactively pushing for changes to shared infrastructure, tooling, and systems that help the broader engineering org become more agentic
• Building and maintaining a healthy, high-performing team culture

Benefits

• Join a fantastic, tight-knit team at the right time: we're growing very quickly, we've most recently raised our Series C from some of the top investors in the valley, and we've achieved product-market fit in our initial markets. You'd join at a magical time when a single person could significantly change the course of the company.
• Do your life's work with people you’ll love working with: we care strongly about our craft and want every person at Speak to feel like they're growing every day. We believe in the idea that working with people you both enjoy and have respect for makes everything better. We hire thoughtfully and only work with people we admire deeply.
• Global in nature: We're live in over 40 countries and launching in a number of new markets soon. We have dedicated offices in San Francisco, Ljubljana, Seoul, and Tokyo, and you’ll have the opportunity to talk to users in each of these regions on a regular basis as well as travel.
• Impact people's lives in a major way: Learning a language is one of the single most life-changing skills one can learn, and right now 99% of people never achieve their goal because the process is broken. We’re helping millions of people achieve their goals and improve their lives.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed