Director Of Engineering (AI)

TL;DR

Director of Engineering (AI): Leading the Lakehouse Data Products Platform team to build foundational data infrastructure for scientific AI products with an accent on distributed systems, open table formats, and platform scalability. Focus on hands-on architectural leadership, driving technical strategy, and mentoring a team of 8+ engineers in a builder-first culture.

Location: On-site in Boston, MA or San Francisco, CA

Company

hirify.global is a mission-driven scientific data and AI cloud platform purpose-built for biopharma to accelerate drug discovery.

What you will do

• Own the architecture and operational strategy for the Lakehouse Platform, including storage, query engines, and data pipelines.
• Lead a team of 8+ engineers, driving sprint-level execution and quarterly delivery commitments.
• Establish engineering standards for testing, observability, and release safety in data infrastructure.
• Mentor and grow senior individual contributors and tech leads while maintaining a hands-on coding workflow.
• Champion AI-assisted development practices and integrate AI capabilities into the Lakehouse data layer.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define integration contracts and shared execution roadmaps.

Requirements

• 10+ years of engineering experience with at least 4 years in data engineering or distributed systems at production scale.
• Demonstrable expertise in Lakehouse technologies such as Apache Spark, Delta Lake, or Apache Iceberg.
• Proven experience leading data engineering teams of 6+ engineers with accountability for strategy and execution.
• Strong command of cloud-native environments (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform).
• Track record of building and operating Tier 1 production data platforms.
• Ability to present complex architectural decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Experience in regulated industries like life sciences, healthcare, or financial services.
• Familiarity with scientific data pipelines or instrument data.
• Real-time streaming experience with Kafka or Apache Flink.
• Exposure to AI/ML workflows including feature stores and vector search infrastructure.
• Prior career experience as a Staff or Principal Engineer.

Culture & Benefits

• Mission-driven work enabling life-saving drug development processes.
• Builder culture where leadership and managers actively contribute code.
• Competitive compensation with meaningful equity in a Series C company.
• 100% employer-paid benefits for employees and immediate family.
• Unlimited PTO and flexible working arrangements.
• 401(k) plan and company-paid life insurance.