Engineering Manager in a fast-growing AI Startup

At the ETH spin-off Lightly, we build software solutions to help companies improve their deep learning models. The available data for deep learning grows faster than human tagging and available compute power. Our customers already face this problem and have too much data to process. As a solution, we built software to identify and work with the most relevant samples only. Learn more about us on our website.

We are a team of talented developers and researchers in Zurich and are backed by YCombinator. Every member of the team is going to have a massive impact.

We use a modern stack of:

• PyTorch, Python, TypeScript, Rust, Svelte, NodeJS
• Docker, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform, AWS

As an Engineering Manager, you will lead and support our product engineering teams building LightlyStudio and LightlyTrain. You will enable the engineering team to do their best work by improving execution, alignment, and engineering practices. This is not a pure management role, you will stay close to the codebase through reviews and selected hands on work.

Particularly, you will get to:

• Own engineering quality and delivery for the two product teams, ensuring reliable execution and consistent engineering standards.
• Increase engineering productivity by removing blockers, improving team coordination, and strengthening planning and sprint execution.
• Establish, evaluate, and evolve processes that scale, including sprint rituals, prioritization, working with founders and product stakeholders on prioritization and cross-team alignment.
• Uphold and improve our engineering standards across codebases, testing, benchmarking, CI and CD, and operational practices.
• Partner with the founders on performance management, feedback cycles, and growth paths, then take increasing ownership over time.
• Support hiring by joining interviews and helping close candidates after an initial onboarding period.
• Stay close to architecture and implementation, contribute via code reviews, technical decisions, and occasional hands on development to learn the products deeply and help the team move faster.

Ideally you have:

• MSc or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field
• Experience leading software teams in a fast moving environment, ideally at a startup, and exposure to larger company practices.
• Strong software engineering background and the ability to go deep technically when needed.
• Experience building and shipping complex software products across multiple components, for example ML, backend, and frontend.
• Comfort working with senior engineers and researchers, and enabling a high autonomy team without micromanagement.
• Experience with planning and execution in iterative cycles, for example two week sprints, and a pragmatic approach to process.
• Strong communication skills, ability to align stakeholders, and a product focused mindset.
• Hands on attitude, you enjoy reviewing code, unblocking engineers, and occasionally coding to stay grounded in the system.

Nice to have:

• Experience with PyTorch and ML training or data centric workflows.
• Experience with TypeScript and modern web frontends, plus familiarity with Rust for performance critical components.
• Experience improving CI and CD, testing strategy, benchmarking, reliability, and developer experience.
• Experience scaling teams and engineering practices during growth.

We offer attractive cash- & equity package for you to become part-owner of Lightly. Remote work is also possible.

Interested? Contact us!

We look forward to getting to know you!