Engineering Manager, Public Sector

Overview

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.

• 50% Software engineering - technical product planning, and coding
• 50% Managing a growing team
• Recruit a high-performing engineering team
• Drive engineering productivity. Provide guidance, mentorship, and technical leadership to a team of engineers working on Generative AI projects
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams to define, design, and execute strategic roadmap
• Navigate and deliver outcomes while navigating through complex public sector compliance requirements and frameworks
• Design and implement scalable backend systems for Federal customers, leveraging Scale's modern and 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 own 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 ability 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 has managed an engineering team
• Have extensive experience in software development
• 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, willing to get deep into the weeds to solve problems alongside the team
• Have experience with AI platforms and technologies, including generative models and LLMs
• Have 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. The base salary range for this full-time position in Washington DC is $169,000—$279,000 USD.

For other locations, ranges may apply as posted in the job listing. Benefits include comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, generous PTO, and potential commuter benefits.

PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role.

At Scale, we believe that the transition from traditional software to AI is one of the most important shifts of our time. Our mission is to make that happen faster across every industry, and our team is transforming how organizations build and deploy AI. Our products power the world's most advanced LLMs, generative models, and computer vision models. We are trusted by generative AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft, government agencies like the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, and enterprises including GM and Accenture.

We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We are 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 comply with Pay Transparency provisions. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact  Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information. We also provide a privacy policy with details on data collection.