Head of Engineering

About Zania

Zania is building AI agents for enterprise governance risk and compliance teams to execute complex workflows with full explainability. Series A $18M raised from NEA Anthropic and Menlo Ventures. Founded by a former founding security engineer at Airbnb and builder of Microsoft Security Copilot. Were not building another dashboard were replacing entire workflows with agents that do the work.

Why this role exists

We need a Head of Engineering who will own engineering end-to-end: architecture decisions hiring shipping cadence and team culture. This is not a manage managers role. This is a hands-on technical leader who scales the team from 5 to 20 engineers in the next 12 months while personally ensuring the product is world-class.

What were looking for non-negotiables

1. Builder first manager second. This person was (or could be) the strongest engineer on any team theyve been part of. They chose management not because they plateaued technically but because they were a founder or realized leadership was the highest-leverage way to multiply themselves. They can read a PR spot an architectural mistake and rewrite it themselves if needed.

2. Founder DNA. Prior experience as a technical founder or very early engineering leader (employee #110) at a startup that shipped real product under real constraints. They know what it means to make decisions with incomplete information cut scope ruthlessly and hold a team accountable to weekly ship cycles not quarterly roadmaps.

3. Proven ability to scale a team from small to 20. Theyve hired 1020 engineers in a compressed timeline without lowering the bar. They have a system for how to source close and onboard fast. Ideally they have a personal network of strong engineers in the Bay Area theyd bring with them or recruit from.

4. AI-native mindset. Not interested in AI actively building with LLMs agents tool-use and orchestration frameworks today. They understand prompt engineering evaluation context window management and the difference between demo-ware and production-grade AI systems. Experience with agentic architectures is strongly preferred.

5. Shipping velocity as a core value. They measure engineering health by whats in production not whats in Jira. They set aggressive timelines and hold the team to them. They know how to unblock engineers kill unnecessary process and create a culture where deploying daily is normal.

6. Deep not wide. We do not want a mezzanine leader someone who operates through layers delegates everything and speaks in frameworks. This person goes deep on specific systems debugs production issues at 2am and explains architecture tradeoffs to a customer on a sales call.

What youll do

• Own all engineering output: product quality velocity reliability and security.

• Build the engineering team from current size to 1520 in 12 months. Personally involved in every hire.

• Set and enforce a shipping culture weekly demos continuous deployment minimal process overhead.

• Partner directly with the CEO on product direction prioritization and customer-facing technical conversations.

• Architect and evolve the platform (LLM orchestration agentic workflows compliance automation) for enterprise scale.

• Establish lightweight but real engineering practices: CI/CD observability on-call code review standards.

Signals we look for

• Founded or co-founded a technical startup (even if it didnt work out).

• Scaled an eng team through a Series A/B at a product-led company.

• Has shipped AI/ML products to production not research not POCs.

• Deep in the Bay Area engineering community knows who to call.

• Background in security infrastructure or enterprise SaaS is a plus.

• Has operated in a domain where correctness matters (fintech security health compliance).

Comp

Significant equity competitive cash structured to attract a builder not a caretaker. Reports directly to CEO.

How to apply

Email or apply through our careers page.

Required Experience:

Director