Engineering Manager

Ampersand•San Francisco, CA

52d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our Mission At Ampersand, we are building scalable integration infrastructure that delivers real-time context to AI agents in seconds. Our declarative platform, 150+ open-source connectors, and embeddable UI components give developers the building blocks they need to ship deep, bidirectional integrations. We power cutting-edge AI companies like 11x, Orb, Square, and Crunchbase. Almost every engineering team that has evaluated us against other solutions has chosen to use Ampersand. As our product and brand evolve, we're looking for great people to join our experienced team of former Firebase, AWS, Meta and Square engineers and operators. About Us Ampersand was founded in 2022 by Ayan Barua and Lauren Long — two engineers and repeat founders with a rare combination of developer tools and SaaS experience. You can learn more about our full team here . We've raised Series A funding from top-tier investors known for their early-stage bets on generational companies like Anthropic, Apple, Twilio, Supabase, and Vercel. Together, we believe: This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build the connectivity infrastructure for AI. Seizing this moment requires passion, hard work, and continuous learning. At the same time, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Velocity comes from great strategic decisions, not doing the 99 things you don't have to do. In five core values that shape how we work every day: Craft, Customer Empathy, Ownership Mindset, Velocity, and Humility. The Role We're looking for a Founding Engineering Manager to join a fast-growing AI infrastructure company at a pivotal moment. You'll work directly with the founders and a small, high-retention engineering team, including people who came up through Google, Meta, Cruise, and AWS and have chosen to stay. The culture here is intentional: high craft, high trust, and high ownership. Your job is to protect that while scaling it. This is a hands-on role. You'll be close to the technical work, close to the people doing it, and close to the decisions that shape how the team grows.

Requirements

Significant software engineering experience, including 2+ years leading engineering teams in a startup or high-growth environment (even if you didn’t hold a formal Manager title)
You've led teams through complex technical initiatives and are excited to do it again
Strong technical judgment — you can go deep on architecture and system design when it matters
You build engineering culture, not just org charts: Ownership, craft, and accountability are things you've actually installed somewhere before
Excellent written communication; the team is async-first and decisions travel in writing

Nice To Haves

Experience with Go, TypeScript, React, or similar stacks is a plus
Background in developer tools, APIs, infrastructure platforms, or AI-native products is preferred

Responsibilities

Mentor and grow a high-performing team across full-stack, customer, and forward-deployed engineering.
Run regular 1:1s, give clear feedback, and build the conditions where engineers do their best work and stay.
Own onboarding for new engineers so they ramp quickly and become productive.
Partner with founders on hiring and career development as the org grows beyond its founding core.
Spend approximately 20% of your time doing IC work — staying close to the codebase and tooling.
Drive project management for customer deliverables, especially work that spans multiple engineers or product areas.
Create the conditions for engineers to ship fast: code maintainability, internal documentation, development workflows, QA tools and automation.
Lead by example on AI-accelerated development — advocate for using AI to improve velocity while maintaining reliability and quality.
Own security and compliance alongside our Founding Operations Lead, including SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR.
Manage project-based contract engineers and globally distributed connector contributors.