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Gradientflo Labs

VP of Engineering (Founding Team)

Posted 12 Hours Ago
Be an Early Applicant
In-Office
San Francisco, CA, USA
40K-60K Annually
Expert/Leader
In-Office
San Francisco, CA, USA
40K-60K Annually
Expert/Leader
Lead and scale the founding engineering organization, establish technical culture and delivery standards, guide architecture and reliability, and align engineering execution with product strategy. The role manages seven senior engineers across frontend, backend, AI, prompting, DevOps, and QA; owns hiring and organizational growth; oversees security, observability, testing, and release practices; and helps scale the AI tutoring platform to 100K+ monthly active users while maintaining strong performance and uptime.
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Role Overview

As the VP of Engineering at Vibecoderz, you will be responsible for building, scaling, and inspiring a world-class engineering team. You’ll manage a founding group of 7 senior engineers (PM, FE, BE, AI, Prompt, DevOps, QA) and align them around a shared mission: to create the world’s first AI Agentic Tutor platform for developers.

This role is equal parts strategy and execution. You will set the technical culture, define engineering excellence standards, and deliver product milestones on time. You will partner closely with the CTO and CEO, ensuring Vibecoderz technology is not just groundbreaking, but enterprise-ready, scalable, and reliable.

Key Responsibilities

  • Team Leadership & Culture

    • Manage and mentor the 7 founding engineers, setting goals and accountability frameworks.

    • Build a high-performance engineering culture rooted in ownership, velocity, and innovation.

    • Recruit and scale the engineering org as the company grows beyond MVP.

  • Execution & Delivery

    • Translate product strategy into an engineering roadmap, balancing speed with scalability.

    • Ensure all teams (FE, BE, AI, Prompt, DevOps, QA) deliver on quarterly OKRs.

    • Establish code review, testing, and release practices across the org.

  • Architecture & Technology Oversight

    • Guide architecture decisions in alignment with CTO, ensuring scalable design across multi-agent systems.

    • Oversee system performance, reliability, and security.

    • Optimize collaboration between AI engineers, prompt engineers, and core backend/frontend teams.

  • Cross-Functional Collaboration

    • Partner with Product Manager to ensure engineering priorities align with business outcomes.

    • Represent engineering to external stakeholders (investors, partners, community).

    • Bridge strategy with hands-on execution—jumping into technical reviews when needed.

  • Governance & Scaling

    • Implement observability, security, and compliance frameworks.

    • Ensure engineering metrics (velocity, uptime, error rates, deployment frequency) are tracked and improved.

    • Own the hiring plan to double the team within 12–18 months.

Success Metrics

  • 90 Days (Probation Period):

    • Align the 7-person founding team around a single engineering playbook (sprints, reviews, CI/CD standards).

    • Deliver the MVP milestone (Text → Course, TutorAgent, real-time workspace).

    • Define hiring needs for next 3–5 engineers.

  • 12 Months:

    • Platform scales to 100K+ MAUs with <500ms latency in core workflows.

    • Engineering org grows to 20+ people, with strong leads for each sub-team.

    • Maintain 99.9% uptime and <1% production bug leakage.

    • Establish Vibecoderz engineering culture as a magnet for top-tier AI/EdTech talent.

Must-Haves

  • 12–15+ years in engineering leadership, strictly in product companies.

  • Proven success scaling engineering orgs from MVP → 100K+ users.

  • Hands-on technical depth: FE/BE/AI systems, not just management.

  • Track record of building and retaining top-tier engineering talent.

  • IIT or equivalent pedigree strongly preferred.

Nice-to-Haves

  • Background in AI/ML-driven platforms.

  • Previous co-founding or early-stage startup leadership.

  • Public speaking / evangelism experience with developer communities.

Tech Stack Visibility

You will oversee and guide engineering teams working with:

  • Frontend: Next.js, Shadcn UI, Socket.IO, Firebase Auth, Browser-Use API

  • Backend: FastAPI, Cloud Run, API Gateway, Firestore, Cloud Tasks, Workflows

  • AI/Prompting: Google ADK, Gemini Pro/Flash/Vision/Live API, Pub/Sub, LangSmith, Langfuse

  • Data: Firestore, Neo4j Aura, Redis

  • Infra: Terraform, GitHub Actions, OpenTelemetry, GCP IAM/Firewall

  • Testing/QA: Playwright, Cypress, Pytest, LangSmith evals

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