Field Engineering Manager, Public Sector

Lead a team of 6-8 field engineers on federal AI projects, balancing technical delivery and people management. Requires 5+ years of engineering experience and 2+ years of management experience.

Scale AI’s Public Sector business is growing quickly as government agencies adopt AI to support critical national security, defense, and public sector missions. We’re looking for a hands-on Field Engineering Manager on the front lines leading a team of our field engineering efforts for our federal AI projects, having the opportunity to meaningfully impact millions of dollars in revenue by working closely with our largest public sector customers and ensuring that they become passionate, lifelong Scale customers. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in technical environments, enjoys managing teams while staying close to the code, and wants to work on meaningful problems that impact real world operations across the U.S. government.

Field Engineers are software engineering generalists who enjoy working with clients directly, taking ambiguous requirements and issues, and quickly designing and building production-grade solutions in close collaboration with the Product, Engineering, and Delivery teams. Field Engineers are experts on Scale's products and codebase, and have general technical knowledge on GenAI systems, APIs, networking, and data engineering. Field Engineers are strong relationship builders, great project managers, and always fun to work with. You’ll play a critical role in delivering technical solutions—all while helping your team grow and execute.

You’ll split your time between technical planning and execution (50%) and people management and team development (50%), leading a team of 6-8 engineers. You’ll work cross-functionally with product, engineering, security, and delivery teams to ensure our engineering efforts meet complex federal compliance, security, and performance needs.

Day to day:

50% Field engineering - customer engagement, technical development and delivery
50% Managing a growing team

You will:

Recruit a high-performing engineering team.
Drive engineering productivity. Provide guidance, mentorship, and technical leadership to a team of customer facing engineers working on Generative AI projects.
Collaborating with cross-functional teams to define, design, and execute strategic roadmap based on customer needs.
Work directly with customers to understand their problems and translate those into custom workflows within Scale’s platform.
Be open to ~25% travel or relocation to a key customer geographic location.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define the vision for backend solutions, ensuring they meet the unique needs of government agencies operating in secure environments.
Implement end-to-end data integrations, syncing customer’s data to Scale’s platform and back.
Participate actively in customer engagements, working closely with stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver innovative solutions.
Lead end-to-end technical delivery of custom workflows from scoping to development to testing to implementation
This role will require an active TS/SCI security clearance or the ability to obtain a security clearance.

Ideally you’d have:

5+ years of full-time engineering experience, post-graduation.
2+ years of prior engineering management or equivalent experience and previously managed an engineering team.
Track record of success as a hybrid customer facing engineer, forward deployed software engineer, and ability to quickly adapt to different roles.
Prior experience developing with Python and JavaScript, or other modern software languages.
Cloud-Native Technologies: Familiarity with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and experience in developing and deploying applications in a cloud-native environment. Understanding of containerization (e.g., Docker) and container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes) is a plus.
Linux experience: Understanding of shell scripting, operating systems, etc.
Networking experience: Understanding of networking technologies, configuration (ports, protocols, etc) is a plus.
Data Engineering: Knowledge of ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes and experience in building data pipelines to integrate and process diverse data sources. Understanding of data modeling, data warehousing, and data governance principles.
Problem Solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills to understand complex challenges and devise effective solutions. Ability to think critically, identify root causes, and propose innovative approaches to overcome technical obstacles.
Understand unique DoD and USG constraints when it comes to technology.

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position, determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You’ll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

Please reference the job posting's subtitle for where this position will be located. For pay transparency purposes, the base salary range for this full-time position in the locations of San Francisco, New York, Seattle is:

{#salary}$273,700—$341,550 USD{/salary}

{#salary}$238,050—$297,850 USD{/salary}

{#salary}$213,900—$267,950 USD{/salary}

PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

About Us:

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Cisco, DLA Piper, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at accommodations@scale.com. Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information.

We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.

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