# Head of Engineering, AI Platform

**Company:** [Gusto](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/gusto)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA
**Role:** Engineering Management
**Salary:** $321k – $356k/yr
**Experience:** 12+ years
**Skills:** Llm Agents, Orchestration, Tool Calling, RAG, LangGraph, Vercel Ai Sdk, Model Gateway, Mcp, Prompt Engineering, Evaluation, Observability, Guardrails, Ai Strategy, Platform Engineering, Product Engineering
**Posted:** 2026-08-19

> Leads the AI Platform organization, setting technical strategy for production AI agents and the shared platform used across the company. Requires 12+ years of engineering experience, including leadership through managers and strong expertise in agent architecture, evaluation, reliability, and guardrails.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Lead the AI Platform organization of approximately 25 engineers and the managers overseeing its teams.
- Set the technical strategy and roadmap for AI agents and the shared platform used across the company.
- Define ownership boundaries between the shared platform and product teams.
- Lead, empower, and hire managers and tech leads as the organization grows.
- Establish engineering standards for prompts, tools, policies, evaluations, guardrails, reliability, and cost management.
- Partner with product managers, designers, data scientists, product teams, and senior leadership.
- Represent AI engineering and align the group's work with the broader AI strategy.
- Champion AI-native ways of working and build a strong engineering organization.

## Requirements
- 12+ years of engineering experience, including at least 5 years leading through managers and tech leads.
- Experience developing and empowering engineering leaders.
- Track record of shipping reliable AI or agent products with clear engineering ownership.
- Deep understanding of LLM agents, orchestration, tool calling, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), evaluation, and monitoring.
- Ability to set technical strategy across multiple teams and align teams around shared outcomes.
- Technical depth to engage senior engineers on complex architecture decisions.
- Experience growing an engineering organization, preferably in an evolving environment.
- Experience treating reliability, evaluation, and guardrails as core engineering concerns.
- Experience leading cross-functional teams with product, design, and data science partners.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills with technical and non-technical audiences.

## Nice-to-haves
- Experience across both platform and product engineering.
- Experience with LangGraph or the Vercel AI SDK.
- Leadership experience in fintech or another regulated environment.

## Compensation and Benefits
- San Francisco cash compensation target: **$321,000–$356,000 USD annually**.
- Annual cash incentives and stock equity are additional.
- Full-time employees receive benefits and equity (RSUs).

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