Engineering Leader

Collinear powers leading AI labs and Fortune 500 enterprises with high-signal post-training datasets and RL environments, helping teams improve model quality faster and at lower cost.

We simulate realistic, multi-turn user and adversarial scenarios to uncover how models fail in production, then turn those failures into curated data and reinforcement learning environments for CPT, SFT, and RL. The result is faster convergence, stronger robustness, and measurable gains where it matters most.

Collinear is a VC-backed startup serving frontier labs and F500 enterprises deploying real-world AI systems at scale.

As the Engineering Leader, you will own the architecture, reliability, and evolution of Collinear’s AI agent improvement product offerings. This role is deeply hands-on and focused on backend systems, infrastructure, and distributed execution, with a strong emphasis on performance, scalability, and enterprise readiness.

You will be responsible for designing and operating the systems that support multiple customers, multiple deployment models, and an expanding set of evaluation and simulation scenarios. While people management and hiring are nice to have, the priority is technical leadership, architectural judgment, and execution in a fast-moving, customer-facing environment.

This role is ideal for someone who has built and operated cloud services at scale and wants to apply that experience to a complex, high-impact AI platform.

• Own the architecture, reliability, and scalability of Collinear’s AI agent improvement product offerings.

• Design and operate multi-tenant, distributed backend systems that support enterprise customers.

• Make platform-level decisions across infrastructure, runtimes, deployment models, and developer experience.
  

• Translate customer needs and ambiguity into clear engineering priorities and durable platform capabilities.

• Partner with founders and research leadership on technical strategy, roadmap, and tradeoffs.

• Establish engineering standards and best practices as the platform and team scale.

• Hire and mentor engineers over time as the organization grows.

We’re looking for someone who is deeply technical, product-minded, and comfortable operating with ambiguity.

You likely have:

• 7–10+ years of experience building backend systems, platforms, or cloud services.

• Strong experience with distributed systems, infrastructure, and cloud-native architectures.

• Hands-on experience with:

  • Python (primary language today)

  • Containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)

  • Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
    

• Experience building or operating B2B SaaS platforms at scale, including multitenancy and reliability concerns.

• Comfort working directly with customers in a B2B setting, including handling escalations and ambiguous requirements.

• Strong communication skills and sound technical judgment.

• Experience in cloud or data infrastructure companies (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure, Databricks, Snowflake, Datadog, Confluent).

• Prior experience at an early-stage startup.

• Some people management or hiring experience (not required).

• Experience working on ML platforms, evaluation systems, or large-scale data pipelines.
  

Collinear is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

The base salary range for this role in California is $200,000 to $400,000 per year, depending on experience, skills, and qualifications. This role will also be eligible for equity, benefits, and bonuses.

Collinear provides reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout the application and hiring process. If you need an accommodation, please contact us.

Pursuant to applicable local ordinances, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.