# Tech Lead Manager, Frontier Data Products - Multimodal

**Company:** [Mercor](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/mercor)
**Location:** New York, NY
**Role:** Engineering Management
**Salary:** $300k – $420k/yr
**Experience:** 5+ years
**Skills:** Backend Systems, Distributed Systems, Data Engineering, Multimodal Data, Asynchronous Processing, Metadata, Versioning, Computer Vision, Video Processing, Audio Processing, Ml Platforms, Annotation Systems, Production Architecture, Quality Evaluation, Human-In-The-Loop
**Posted:** 2026-09-08

> Leads a player-coach engineering team building reliable, scalable multimodal data products across image, video, audio, and document workflows. The role combines hands-on backend and distributed-systems architecture with team management, recruiting, and product delivery.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Set technical and product strategy for multimodal data products.
- Design systems covering image, video, audio, document, and mixed-media data from ingestion through processing, review, validation, versioning, and delivery.
- Build reusable abstractions across modalities while preserving modality-specific quality, performance, and customer requirements.
- Develop quality systems combining automated evaluation, model-assisted checks, expert review, sampling, and adjudication.
- Maintain traceability for outputs, including provenance, changes, evaluation, and acceptance decisions.
- Own reliability, performance, and cost for storage-heavy, compute-intensive, long-running workflows.
- Write production code, lead design reviews, and contribute to consequential technical work.
- Manage, coach, recruit, and onboard engineers; establish clear expectations, feedback, delegation, and ownership.
- Partner with product, ML, operations, and customer-facing teams to turn customer needs into reusable product capabilities.

## Requirements
- Experience managing a strong engineering team while remaining hands-on technically.
- Deep experience designing and operating production backend, distributed, or data-intensive systems.
- Experience with large unstructured data, asynchronous processing, metadata and versioning, or compute-heavy workflows.
- Experience in at least one of multimedia infrastructure, computer-vision data, video or audio processing, ML platforms, annotation systems, or human-in-the-loop products.
- Strong judgment about platform boundaries and modality-specific versus generalized architecture.
- Track record taking ambiguous, zero-to-one products through architecture, launch, and sustained production operation.
- Ability to recruit, coach, and retain excellent engineers while maintaining a high performance bar.

## Benefits
- Bi-annual performance bonus structure
- Generous equity grant vested over four years
- Up to $15,000 relocation bonus
- $10,000 housing bonus for employees living within 0.5 miles of the office
- $1,500 monthly meal stipend
- Equinox membership
- $200 monthly laundry reimbursement
- $200 monthly personal wellness reimbursement
- Health, dental, and vision insurance

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