Vice President of Engineering

Search Atlas•San Francisco, CA

6h•$200,000 - $425,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Search Atlas is a Silicon Valley anomaly: we bootstrapped to $32M ARR without a dollar of VC funding. We built systems that crawl millions of pages daily and serve Fortune 500s with 99.99% uptime. Now, we are pioneering Agentic Marketing—AI systems that don’t just analyze data; they act on it autonomously. We don’t need a spreadsheet jockey. We need a VP of Engineering who possesses the technical rigor of a Staff+ IC and the strategic vision of a Founder. You will own the execution engine that takes us to $100M ARR. You won’t be trapped in conference rooms; you’ll be in the trenches of architecture, reviewing critical-path code, and mentoring the next generation of elite engineers. 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.

Requirements

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.
You’ve successfully scaled SaaS platforms from $20M to $100M+ ARR in capital-efficient environments.
You measure cycle time, deployment frequency, and MTTR. You hate waste and love aggressive iteration.
You understand that high-bandwidth leadership happens in person. You thrive in whiteboard wars and rapid, face-to-face iteration.
Must be currently authorized to work in the US without future sponsorship.

Responsibilities

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.
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.