[Hiring] VP of Engineering @Influur

Role Description

We're looking for a VP of Engineering to own and grow the engineering function behind Pulse. This isn't a manager who oversees from a distance; this is someone who rolls up their sleeves, sets the technical vision, and moves the product forward at the speed the market demands.

You'll be the person who figures out how to build the right thing, fast, without breaking what's already working. You'll lead a lean engineering team, hire exceptional talent, and partner directly with the Founders to take Pulse into new verticals and markets.

This role is for someone who has lived the chaos of an early-stage startup, loved it, and knows how to bring structure without slowing things down.

What You'll Own

• Ship fast, learn faster: You set the pace. Features go from idea to live in days, not sprints. You build a culture where speed is a feature and every bet is designed to be validated quickly.
• AI-first engineering: At Influur, AI isn't a tool you reach for occasionally; it's how we breathe. You lead by example: you're deep in the foundational models, you know when to use GPT-4o vs. Claude vs. Gemini vs. something smaller and fine-tuned like Kimi, and you make sure the whole team works the same way. An engineer not using AI credits is a red flag.
• Technical architecture: You own the decisions that let us scale without rebuilding. Infrastructure, APIs, data pipelines—you design systems that grow with the product, not against it.
• Team leadership: You've built engineering teams from scratch: hiring, firing, and everything in between. You hire exceptional people, set a high bar, and create an environment where great engineers can learn while doing their best work. You lead with clarity and trust.
• Product partnership: You sit next to the Founders, not behind them. You turn vision into a roadmap, push back when something doesn't make sense, and propose better paths when you see them.
• Customer & Product Obsession: You stay close to customers, translate what they actually need into what gets built, and ship products that set the bar, not just meet it.
• Reliability that earns trust: Sony Music and WMG depend on what we build. You make sure it works, without turning reliability into bureaucracy.

Qualifications

• This role is for someone who has already built in the AI-native era of engineering, not someone who's catching up to it.
• Deep, hands-on knowledge of foundational AI models; you know the landscape, the tradeoffs, and when to use which.
• Lean by nature; you do more with less, cut what doesn't matter, and never over-engineer.
• You've built through at least one 0→1 and one real growth phase.
• Strong backend and systems fundamentals; you can go deep when it counts.
• You can sit with a client, understand their pain fast, and translate it into something the team ships before the week is over.
• Low ego, high output.

Benefits

• Real equity: You're not joining a company that's already figured it out; you're joining at the moment it matters most. Your stake reflects that.
• Direct line to the Founders: No layers, no politics. You'll build strategy and make calls alongside the people who started this.
• The hardest, most interesting engineering problems in AI: Foundational models, real-time campaign execution, agentic products.
• Full remote, full trust: We care about what you ship, not where you sit.
• The chance to build something that's never existed before: Pulse is live, growing, and just getting started. You won't be maintaining; you'll be building.