Senior Manager, Engineering - Contract AI

Ironclad•San Francisco, CA

8d•$245,000 - $295,000

About The Position

Ironclad is the leading AI contracting platform that transforms agreements into assets. Contracts move faster, insights surface instantly, and agents push work forward, all with you in control. Whether you’re buying or selling, Ironclad unifies the entire process on one intelligent platform, providing leaders with the visibility they need to stay one step ahead. That’s why the world’s most transformative organizations, from OpenAI to the World Health Organization and the Associated Press, trust Ironclad to accelerate their business. We’re consistently recognized as a leader in the industry: a Leader in the Forrester Wave and Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contract Lifecycle Management, a Fortune Great Place to Work, and one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Workplaces. Ironclad has also been named to Forbes’ AI 50 and Business Insider’s list of Companies to Bet Your Career On. We’re backed by leading investors including Accel, Y Combinator, Sequoia, BOND, and Franklin Templeton. For more information, visit www.ironcladapp.com or follow us on LinkedIn. About the Teams We are hiring for two critical leadership roles to drive Ironclad's AI platform and product forward: Tech Lead Manager (TLM) for Contract Negotiation AI (Jurist Product Team): Jurist is Ironclad’s flagship AI-powered legal assistant. It enables legal professionals to draft, edit, review, and research contracts within a secure, native document environment. You will lead the engineering efforts behind Jurist’s most complex capabilities, overseeing AI quality and backend architecture. You will lead a team to build systems that assist lawyers in high-stakes negotiations. This role sits at the cutting edge of AI, leveraging agentic systems, LLM post-training, and advanced model orchestration to solve the "last mile" of legal AI. Tech Lead Manager (TLM) for Assistant and Agent Frameworks (Intelligence Platform Team): You will be responsible for building the Assistant product surface, core platform, frameworks, and services that power all of Ironclad's agentic AI capabilities. You will own the infrastructure for LLM orchestration, agentic system development, prompt engineering, and model deployment, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security across the entire AI ecosystem. The TLM at Ironclad We believe in technical leaders who stay close to the metal. 80% Building: Shaping the technical roadmap, designing backend architecture, and implementing AI quality frameworks, writing code. 20% Leading: Mentoring engineers, managing performance. You’ll join a team of smart, low-ego teammates from places like Salesforce, Google, Palantir, and Harvard Law. We offer a culture of high ownership, rapid iteration, and the chance to build the future of the legal profession.

Requirements

Proven Track Record: 5+ years of software experience architecting, building, launching, and maintaining complex systems. We prioritize industry experience and a history of shipping production-grade software.
Engineering Management: 2+ years of technical leadership or management experience, with a demonstrated ability to grow and mentor high-performing teams.
High Agency: You thrive in "zero-to-one" environments and are comfortable navigating the ambiguity of a rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Backend & Distributed Systems: Extensive experience designing the high-performance infrastructure required to power complex, real-world AI workflows.
AI/ML Fluency: Hands-on experience with LLM orchestration, RAG, and establishing rigorous AI quality frameworks (evals, benchmarking, and error analysis).
Modern Stack Awareness: While experience with our specific stack is not required, we work with TypeScript, React, Node.js, and Docker/Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform.
Product Mindset: A passion for building tools that users love. You care deeply about the "why" behind the code and how it solves mission-critical problems for legal professionals.
Collaborative Builder: Experience working closely with researchers, designers, and product managers to rapidly prototype and iterate on novel features.

Responsibilities

Technical Vision: Define and execute a roadmap including intelligent LLM-based agentic systems, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), LLM post-training and domain adaptation.
AI Quality & Backend Excellence: Lead the strategy for AI reliability. You will ensure our models are not just "cool," but production-grade, legally accurate, and scalable.
Team Leadership: Manage and grow a team of talented engineers, fostering a culture that blends ML research excellence with pragmatic, product-focused delivery.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product, Sales, and Marketing to move products like Jurist and Assistant from early adoption to General Availability and massive scale.
MLOps & Infrastructure: Establish robust practices for training, deployment, and continuous monitoring of LLMs in a secure enterprise environment.
Cultural Stewardship: Identify organizational bottlenecks and speak up to fix them. You’ll represent Ironclad’s technical vision to Fortune 500 customers and category-defining startups.

Benefits

100% health coverage for employees (medical, dental, and vision), and 75% coverage for dependents with buy-up plan options available
Market-leading leave policies, including gender-neutral parental leave and compassionate leave
Family forming support through Maven for you and your partner
Paid time off - take the time you need, when you need it
Monthly stipends for wellbeing, hybrid work, and (if applicable) cell phone use
Mental health support through Modern Health, including therapy, coaching, and digital tools
Pre-tax commuter benefits (US Employees)
401(k) plan with Fidelity with employer match (US Employees)
Regular team events to connect, recharge, and have fun
And most importantly: the opportunity to help build the company you want to work at