{"id":36836,"url":"https://alion.io/job/zania-head-of-engineering","title":"Head of Engineering","company":{"id":8463,"name":"Zania","domain":"zania.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/zania","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"C","score":66,"open_postings":14,"ghost_share":0.571,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"}},"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":["Palo Alto, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":220000,"max":300000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Anthropic","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Copilot","optional":false},{"name":"Jira","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-02T18:17:07Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-02","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T02:50:37Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":94,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale","company_stale"],"days_open":93},"description":"About Zania\nZania 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. We're not building another dashboard - we're replacing entire workflows with agents that do the work.\nWhy this role exists\nWe 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.\nWhat we're looking for - non-negotiables\n1. Builder first, manager second. This person was (or could be) the strongest engineer on any team they've 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.\n2. Founder DNA. Prior experience as a technical founder or very early engineering leader (employee #1-10) 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.\n3. Proven ability to scale a team from small to 20+. They've hired 10-20 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 they'd bring with them or recruit from.\n4. 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.\n5. Shipping velocity as a core value. They measure engineering health by what's in production, not what's 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.\n6. 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.\nWhat you'll do\nOwn all engineering output: product quality, velocity, reliability, and security.\n\nBuild the engineering team from current size to 15-20 in 12 months. Personally involved in every hire.\n\nSet and enforce a shipping culture - weekly demos, continuous deployment, minimal process overhead.\n\nPartner directly with the CEO on product direction, prioritization, and customer-facing technical conversations.\n\nArchitect and evolve the platform (LLM orchestration, agentic workflows, compliance automation) for enterprise scale.\n\nEstablish lightweight but real engineering practices: CI/CD, observability, on-call, code review standards.\n\nSignals we look for\nFounded or co-founded a technical startup (even if it didn't work out).\n\nScaled an eng team through a Series A/B at a product-led company.\n\nHas shipped AI/ML products to production - not research, not POCs.\n\nDeep in the Bay Area engineering community - knows who to call.\n\nBackground in security, infrastructure, or enterprise SaaS is a plus.\n\nHas operated in a domain where correctness matters (fintech, security, health, compliance).\n\nMinimum Qualifications\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience\n\n8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3 years in a technical leadership or founding engineering role at a product-led company\n\nDemonstrated experience scaling an engineering team from small to 20+ engineers, with a proven ability to hire, develop, and retain senior technical talent\n\nDeep, hands-on experience shipping AI/ML or agentic systems to production at enterprise scale\n\nStrong written and verbal communication skills - you will partner directly with the CEO and represent engineering in customer-facing technical conversations\n\nComp\nSignificant equity + competitive cash - structured to attract a builder, not a caretaker. Reports directly to CEO.\nHow to apply\nEmail  or apply through our careers page.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4723,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Security Compliance","AI Agents"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-02T18:17:07Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 2","filings_12m":2,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":157500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-29T16:27:21+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.3,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":93,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","ghost","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/zania-head-of-engineering","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/zania-head-of-engineering.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-05T03:40:23Z","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":4707,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z"}},"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":8463},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=8463"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fzania-head-of-engineering"},{"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%2Fzania-head-of-engineering"},{"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%2Fzania-head-of-engineering"},{"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/zania-head-of-engineering\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fzania-head-of-engineering"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":36836}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"zania.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":36836},"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. 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