Engineering Manager - Replicant

About Replicant

Replicant is building the autonomous contact center: AI that answers every call, decides whether a specific AI or a person is best suited to resolve it, and manages the conversation end to end, getting better with every one. We start with voice, the channel people reach for first and the hardest to automate well, and we have run these agents in production for enterprises since 2020. The bots we deliver are the product, so engineering here sits unusually close to customer outcomes.

Customer service is a nearly trillion-dollar problem that is barely one percent automated and moving fast: the category of the decade, and the question is who leads it. Winning means executing a company's procedures with near-perfect reliability while knowing exactly when to flex, which is why determinism and testability are how we earn trust in production, not relics. Meeting that bar on a complex, AI-heavy platform takes a team that can move quickly without losing rigor.

We are lean by design. A small, senior team does the work of a group several times its size, and every engineer owns multiple initiatives. The engineering organization is about 50 people today and growing, and we hold a high bar as we scale.

The Role

We are hiring an Engineering Manager to lead one of our Product Engineering squads: a team of roughly 8 to 15 engineers that takes on a range of projects and products across our platform. You will report directly to the SVP of Engineering, and you will hold full budget and headcount-planning responsibility for your team.

Your priorities, in order: your people, their growth, the process and norms your team works by, and the delivery that follows from all three. This is a servant-leadership role, not a boss-first one. You are not here to own a team; you are here to unlock one.

We expect our managers to be outstanding people managers first. You will carry enough technical competency to establish credibility with your engineers and to reason well about tradeoffs, priorities, and risk, while trusting your senior ICs to own the code.

What You'll Do

• Raise the bar and build the team: Hire exceptional engineers, grow the ones you have, and make the hard calls quickly when someone is not the right fit.
• Set the pace: Create an environment where great engineers want to dig in and push for speed while challenging the status quo.
• Make your team AI-native: Turn individual AI experimentation into team-level results with better throughput and quality.
• Own outcomes, not activity: Drive predictable, high-quality delivery of the work that matters most to customers.
• Shape the solution: Keep your team close to the customer and the bots you ship.
• Invest in engineering excellence: Drive testing and validation that give real confidence in production.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience managing engineers or engineering teams
• 10+ years of experience in a technical field, such as software engineering
• A track record of hiring, developing, and managing the performance of strong technical talent
• Experience owning team budget and headcount planning
• Demonstrated, hands-on AI fluency with practical experience using modern AI tools
• A history of delivering software predictably with a team
• Technical depth in system design and tradeoffs
• Experience partnering closely with Product and other cross-functional teams

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in conversational AI, voice or telephony, ML systems, or real-time infrastructure
• Built or scaled testing and validation for AI or nondeterministic systems
• Comfort in a lean, fast-moving, remote startup

Location, Remote, and Travel

• 100% remote within the United States or Canada.
• Travel is required for in-person meetings approximately every six weeks.

Benefits & Perks

• Company-wide offsites and smaller team gatherings
• Tech & learning stipend for conferences, books, and courses
• Flexible vacations and paid sabbatical after 5 years
• Comprehensive health and wellness benefits
• Competitive salary and equity with upside