{"id":68327,"url":"https://alion.io/job/vast-director-of-engineering","title":"Director of Engineering","company":{"id":26005,"name":"Vast.ai","domain":"vast.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/vast","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"D","score":49,"open_postings":14,"ghost_share":0.857,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","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":230000,"max":350000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":350000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"CUDA","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-07T03:47:03Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-07","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T19:58:59Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":121,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":121},"description":"About Us\nVast.ai ’s cloud powers AI projects and businesses all over the world. We are democratizing and decentralizing AI computing-reshaping our future for the benefit of humanity.\nWe are a growing and highly motivated team dedicated to an ambitious technical plan. Our structure is flat, our ambitions are out-sized, and leadership is earned by shipping excellence.\nWe seek engineers with strong intrinsic drive, a true passion for advancing the state of the art, and a mix of architecture, coding, and communication skills.\nLOCATION: On-site at our office in San Francisco.\nThe Role\nYou will report directly to Jake Cannell, our founder and CEO, who built the platform and remains deeply involved in technical architecture. You will partner with him to turn technical direction and product priorities into a high-functioning engineering organization: clear ownership, fast delivery, strong code quality, sustainable reliability, and a team that gets better every quarter.\nThis is not a purely managerial role. The right candidate still enjoys working in the codebase and earns technical trust through judgment, reviews, and occasional critical-path shipping.\nYou will initially lead a group of approximately 8 engineers across two product/infrastructure teams.\nThe technical surface area is broad: distributed infrastructure, GPU scheduling and availability, marketplace dynamics, developer experience, payments and billing, reliability, security, and high-throughput backend systems. The role is ideal for someone who likes building both the product and the engineering organization behind it.\nWhat You Will Own\nDelivery across the customer-facing platform: console, APIs, CLI/SDK, serverless, clusters, billing, and the marketplace engine\n\nHiring and team design: partner with recruiting to source, assess, close, and onboard senior engineers; maintain a high talent bar; and build the team structure needed to support the roadmap. You will own hiring outcomes for your group.\n\nEngineering quality: review standards, CI, test coverage, incident response, and an on-call rotation that does not burn people out\n\nTeam growth: developing engineers into senior engineers and seniors into leads\n\nExecution cadence: turning Jake's technical direction and product priorities into shipped software on predictable timelines, with the minimum process that makes us faster\n\nFirst Six Months, Concretely\nShip code in week one\n\nOwn delivery for a group of engineers across two to three teams by day 90\n\nBuild and execute a hiring plan that results in four or more high-quality senior engineering hires, while preserving the technical bar\n\nStand up incident review and release processes that engineers actually like\n\nEarn the org's trust the only way that works here: technical judgment demonstrated in the codebase\n\nYou Are\nA strong engineer first: 10+ years building software, with real depth in at least one of distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, GPU/ML systems, or high-throughput backend platforms\n\nAn experienced leader: 5+ years managing engineers, including hiring, performance management, and team building at a fast-moving company\n\nHands-on by choice: you review code daily and still ship\n\nDirect: you give sharp, kind feedback and expect the same\n\nPragmatic about process: you add structure only where it increases shipping speed, and you cut everything else\n\nNice to have: marketplace or infrastructure company experience, CUDA/GPU stack familiarity, an open-source track record.\nBenefits\nComprehensive health, dental, vision, and life insurance\n\n401(k) with company match\n\nMeaningful early-stage equity\n\nOnsite meals, snacks, and close collaboration with founders/tech leaders\n\nAmbitious, fast-paced startup culture where initiative is 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