Deploy AI compliance agents for controls testing, risk assessments, policy management, and audits with evidence-backed accuracy. Backed by NEA.
About the role
Own all engineering output: product quality, velocity, reliability, and security. Build the engineering team from current size to 15–20 in 12 months. Personally involved in every hire.
What they're looking for
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a technical leadership or founding engineering role at a product-led company
- Demonstrated experience scaling an engineering team from small to 20+ engineers, with a proven ability to hire, develop, and retain senior technical talent
- Deep, hands-on experience shipping AI/ML or agentic systems to production at enterprise scale
- Strong written and verbal communication skills — you will partner directly with the CEO and represent engineering in customer-facing technical conversations
More about this role
Zania is building AI agents for enterprise governance, risk, and compliance teams to execute complex workflows with full explainability. Series A, $18M raised from NEA, Anthropic, and Menlo Ventures. Founded by a former founding security engineer at Airbnb and builder of Microsoft Security Copilot. We're not building another dashboard — we're replacing entire workflows with agents that do the work.
We need a Head of Engineering who will own engineering end-to-end: architecture decisions, hiring, shipping cadence, and team culture. This is not a "manage managers" role. This is a hands-on technical leader who scales the team from ~5 to 20+ engineers in the next 12 months while personally ensuring the product is world-class.
1. Builder first, manager second. This person was (or could be) the strongest engineer on any team they've been part of. They chose management not because they plateaued technically, but because they were a founder or realized leadership was the highest-leverage way to multiply themselves. They can read a PR, spot an architectural mistake, and rewrite it themselves if needed.
2. Founder DNA. Prior experience as a technical founder or very early engineering leader...
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