{"id":867336,"url":"https://alion.io/job/tolans-agent-engineering-manager","title":"Agent Engineering Manager","company":{"id":697608,"name":"Tolan","domain":"tolans.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/tolans","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":200000,"max":300000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Notion","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-01-29T02:58:15Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-01-29","last_verified_at":"2026-11-03T10:46:25Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":278,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":278},"description":"Tolan is building personal AI that helps people think, reflect, and take action in their real lives.\nWe're an experienced team that previously founded Even, acquired for $300M in 2022. Tolan is backed by the designers and founders behind Instagram, Retro, Behance, Vimeo, and Notion.\nThe Role\nWe're hiring an Agent Engineering Manager to break down ambiguous problems, delegate to agents, review their work critically, and course-correct when things go sideways. This isn't a management position - you won't have direct reports. But you'll need every skill that made you a great engineering manager. You'll design and operate complex agent orchestration systems, develop patterns for human-agent collaboration, and ship real product features primarily through agent-assisted development.\nThis is a role we're creating for the first time as of January 2026. Over the past 3 months we've observed a step-function change in the reliability and capabilities of long-running AI agents. We've re-oriented our own work around this new reality, and our most effective engineers now spend more time orchestrating agents than writing code directly. We're certainly not the only people adjusting to this new reality - Karpathy's recent thoughts resonate with what we've been experiencing.\nWhat You'll Do\nBreak down ambiguous product problems into concrete, well-scoped tasks for agents to execute.\n\nDelegate to AI agents, review their output critically, and course-correct when things go sideways.\n\nDesign and operate complex agent orchestration systems that ship real product features.\n\nDevelop and document patterns for effective human-agent collaboration across the team.\n\nHelp Tolan's engineering practice evolve as the capabilities of long-running agents continue to improve.\n\nWho We're Looking For\nExperienced engineer. You have 5+ years of software engineering experience, with meaningful time spent in engineering management or tech lead roles.\n\nSkilled delegator. You know how to scope work and give feedback that improves output - skills honed managing people, now applied to agents.\n\nHands-on with AI. You have direct experience with AI coding assistants and agent orchestration.\n\nStrong opinions. You know when to use agents and when to do it yourself.\n\nThrives in ambiguity. You have a knack for turning fuzzy goals into concrete, executable tasks.\n\nAgent-first mindset. You genuinely enjoy the \"managing agents\" workflow and see it as the future of building.\n\nBonus points if you:\nHave built or contributed to agent orchestration tooling.\n\nHave written publicly about AI-assisted development workflows.\n\nHave experience with long-running, multi-step agent systems.\n\nLeft management because you missed building, but still miss the parts of management that were about clarity and leverage.\n\nCompensation: $200,000-300,000 base salary + equity + benefits","description_format":"text","description_chars":2854,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-13T14:26:32Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":7,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.247,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":278,"expected_fill_days":30,"reasons":["conf:0","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-03T05:54:40Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/tolans-agent-engineering-manager","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/tolans-agent-engineering-manager.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-03T12:03:19Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":16610,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-04T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":697608},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=697608"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ftolans-agent-engineering-manager"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ftolans-agent-engineering-manager"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ftolans-agent-engineering-manager"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/tolans-agent-engineering-manager\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ftolans-agent-engineering-manager"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":867336}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"tolans.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":867336},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}