Engineering Manager
- Salary
- $450,000 - $500,000
- Level
- Lead
- Work type
- On-site · San Francisco
- Visa
- Sponsors visas
Open. First seen 2 October 2026.
About the role
Thinking Machines Lab's standard text
About Thinking Machines
The mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. We are training frontier models with Inkling, developing Tinker to let people make models their own, and crafting interfaces that broaden human-AI communication. We believe the future worth building is human, and we're hiring people who want to build it.
About the Role
We're hiring an Engineering Manager to lead a team of senior and staff-level engineers across ML infrastructure and product. You will help the team build and scale systems that are reliable, performant, and easy to operate.
This role combines collaboration with hand-on work. You’ll partner with tech leads to set the technical direction for your team and own its execution. You should also be ready to go deep on system design and contribute directly when needed.
What You’ll Do
- Lead and grow a team of senior and staff-level engineers, setting clear expectations and maintaining a high bar for execution.
- Own architecture, system design, and long-term technical direction for your team's systems, with emphasis on reliability and performance.
- Contribute directly to design reviews, prototyping, and debugging critical issues.
- Partner with researchers and product teams to define roadmaps and prioritize work.
- Hire and close senior engineering talent. Mentor engineers into technical leaders.
Skills and Qualifications
Minimum qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent industry experience in computer science, engineering, or similar.
- 8+ years of experience building and scaling production systems, including system design and distributed systems.
- 3+ years of engineering management experience in high-growth environments.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience managing teams of senior or staff-level engineers.
- Background in infrastructure, systems engineering, or developer productivity.
- Familiarity with AI/ML systems, data infrastructure, or high-performance computing.
- Track record of building or contributing to widely used systems, platforms, or tools.
Logistics
- Location: This role is based in San Francisco, California.
- Compensation: Depending on background, skills and experience, the expected annual salary range for this position is $450,000 - $500,000 USD.
- Visa sponsorship: We sponsor visas. While we can't guarantee success for every candidate or role, if you're the right fit, we're committed to working through the visa process together.
- Benefits: Thinking Machines offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, unlimited PTO, paid parental leave, and relocation support as needed.
What this role asks for
84% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Thinking Machines Lab's standard text, folded away below.
Read against Thinking Machines Lab's other open postings on this site.
The team: Core Engineering HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 16 open in Core Engineering. 6 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in June: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Python (11 of 16), Kubernetes (8 of 16), Rust (7 of 16), Linux (5 of 16), LLM (4 of 16), Machine Learning (4 of 16), Golang (3 of 16)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing posted Oct 6
- Software Engineer, Inference posted Oct 2
- Software Engineer, Infrastructure posted Oct 1
- Developer Experience Engineer posted Sep 29
- Developer Relations Engineer posted Sep 29
- Software Engineer, Sandboxing posted Sep 22
- Software Engineer, Product posted Aug 31
- Site Reliability Engineer, Post Training posted Aug 31
- Site Reliability Engineer, Production posted Aug 31
- Software Engineer, Evaluation Platform / Infra posted Aug 31
- Software Engineer, Research Tools posted Aug 31
- Software Engineer, Systems Generalist posted Aug 4
- Software Engineer, Supercomputing posted Aug 4
- Reliability Engineer, Supercomputing posted Jun 24
- Network Engineer, Supercomputing posted Jun 24
From the team and dates on Thinking Machines Lab's own job board.
Salary context
83 other open postings titled Engineering Manager state a salary: median USD 200,000 to USD 250,000 a year.
See Engineering Manager salaries in San Francisco →
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