Engineering Manager, Public Sector

New York, NY;
San Francisco, CA;
St. Louis, MO;
Washington, DC

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 Engineering Manager to lead a team of software engineers building core products and infrastructure for these 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. You’ll play a critical role in delivering backend systems, distributed platforms, and ML tooling used by our public sector partners—all while helping your team grow and execute.

Day to day:

• 50% Software engineering – technical product planning and coding
• 50% Managing a growing team.

• Recruit a high‑performing engineering team.
• Drive engineering productivity and provide guidance, mentorship, and technical leadership to a team of engineers working on Generative AI projects.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams to define, design, and execute strategic roadmap.
• Navigate and deliver outcomes while handling complex public sector compliance requirements and frameworks.
• Design and implement scalable backend systems for federal customers, leveraging Scale’s modern, cloud‑native AI infrastructure.
• Develop distributed systems, data‑intensive applications, and machine‑learning infrastructure to enable real impact for mission owners.
• Build robust and reliable backend systems that can serve as standalone products, empowering customers to accelerate their AI ambitions.
• Participate actively in customer engagements, working closely with stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver innovative solutions.
• Contribute to the platform roadmap and product strategy for Scale AI’s federal business, playing a key role in shaping the future direction of our offerings.
• Have or be able to obtain a TS/SCI clearance.

• 5+ years of full‑time engineering experience, post‑graduation.
• 2+ years of prior engineering management or equivalent experience and have managed an engineering team.
• Experience scaling products at hyper‑growth startups.
• Excitement to work with AI technologies and their applications for the public sector.
• Extremely strong track record as an individual contributor.
• Show a track record of mentoring and leading teams in successful projects.
• Possess excellent communication and collaboration skills, and the ability to translate complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders.

• TS/SCI clearance.
• Deep technical knowledge of software development, with a willingness to get deep into the weeds to solve problems alongside the team.
• Experience with AI platforms and technologies, including generative models and LLMs.
• Previous experience in government or government‑facing technology roles.
• Experience with cloud‑native technologies, full‑stack development, data engineering, and ML‑ops infrastructure.

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. Eligible locations:

San Francisco, New York: $238,050 – $297,850 USD

Washington DC: $213,900 – $267,950 USD

St Louis: $178,250 – $223,100 USD

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world’s most important decisions. Our products provide 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

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