Senior Engineering Manager

<div class="content-intro"><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At Compass, our mission is to help everyone find their place in the world. Founded in 2012, we’re revolutionizing the real estate industry with our end-to-end platform that empowers residential real estate agents to deliver exceptional service to seller and buyer clients.</span></p></div><p>As the <strong>Senior Engineering Manager for the AI Platform Team</strong>, you will lead the <strong>AI Engineering Hub</strong> of our newly established Staff AI Enablement Organization. In this highly visible role, you will bridge the gap between complex infrastructure and real-world business impact. Your mandate is two-fold: overseeing the <strong>Tier 1 Platform Foundation</strong> (building reusable, secure AI primitives like agent inference, prompt tuning, and orchestration) and coordinating the <strong>Tier 2 Staff Enablement</strong> efforts (partnering directly with departments like Finance, Legal, and Transaction Management to deploy deep, domain-specific workflow automations).</p> <p>You will manage a lean, high-caliber, hybrid team of full-time Compass software engineers—ranging from Junior to Staff-level —alongside a flexible pool of strategic contractors. By treating the platform as a product, you will build a secure, unified "AI Platform Flywheel" that protects proprietary company data while systematically cutting operational overhead to capture millions in business efficiency.</p> <p><strong>Responsibilities:</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Lead and Develop Talent:</strong> Directly manage, mentor, and grow a hybrid team of full-time engineers and contractors. Cultivate a high-performing culture through individualized coaching, clear performance standards, and proactive career pathing.</li> <li><strong>Drive AI Platform Strategy:</strong> Formulate and execute the roadmap for foundational AI platform primitives (agent orchestration, LLM gateway, telemetry, secure caching, etc.) in close collaboration with senior leadership and Principal Engineers.</li> <li><strong>Accelerate Business Enablement:</strong> Deeply partner with corporate departments (Finance, Legal, Ops, etc.) to identify automation opportunities, translating operational processes into structured AI integrations that run on your platform primitives.</li> <li><strong>Enforce Strict AI Governance:</strong> Oversee technical design and architecture to ensure all AI tools strictly adhere to information security, data residency, and identity and access management (IAM) guidelines.</li> <li><strong>Promote Operational Excellence:</strong> Establish and monitor clear performance metrics (accuracy, latency, token consumption, and cost observability). Implement robust logging, alerting, and rapid incident response systems.</li> <li><strong>Balance Strategic Resources:</strong> Make critical, data-driven decisions on team structure and resource allocation, deciding when to leverage flexible contractors for short-term velocity versus retaining core technical architecture inside our FTE footprint.</li> <li><strong>Deliver Compelling Communication:</strong> Drive high-level technical and strategic written communication (e.g., system tenets, architectural plans, and project charters) to align multiple cross-functional stakeholders around technical trade-offs.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Requirements:&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Strong Technical Background:</strong> 10+ years of software engineering experience, with a proven track record of building scalable developer platforms, APIs, SaaS infrastructure, or centralized backend frameworks.</li> <li><strong>Direct People Management:</strong> 6+ years of experience leading software engineering squads, with proven success managing senior and staff-level engineers, as well as geographically distributed teams.</li> <li><strong>Fluency in the Generative AI Stack:</strong> Deep familiarity with modern LLM application architectures, vector databases, prompt design, fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and agent orchestration libraries.</li> <li><strong>Hybrid Team Stewardship:</strong> Experience managing a blended team model of full-time employees and contractors, keeping quality bars high while driving execution velocity.</li> <li><strong>Comfort with Ambiguity:</strong> A proven self-starter who can take open-ended business problems and shape them into clear, structured, and phased engineering plans with minimal guidance.</li> <li><strong>Customer Empathy &amp; Product Mindset:</strong> Demonstrated ability to understand the pain points of internal "customers" (non-technical business departments) and package platform capabilities into intuitive, reliable internal products.</li> <li><strong>Security &amp; Compliance Aptitude:</strong> Solid understanding of enterprise security concepts, including IAM, data isolation, encryption, and regulatory compliance standards (e.g., SOC 2, PCI DSS) as they relate to cloud-based applications.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Compensation:</strong> The base pay range for this position is $<span data-sheets-root="1">225,990</span>-<span data-sheets-root="1">$251,100</span>; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Bonuses and restricted stock units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to a full range of benefits. Base pay is based on market location. Minimum wage for the position will always be met.</p><div class="content-conclusion"><div> <p><strong>Perks that You Need to Know About:</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Participation in our incentive programs (which may include eligible cash, equity, or commissions). Plus paid vacation, holidays, sick time, parental leave, and recharge leave; medical, tele-health, dental and vision benefits; 401(k) plan; flexible spending accounts (FSAs); commuter program; life and disability insurance; Maven (a support system for new parents); Carrot (fertility benefits); UrbanSitter (caregiver referral network); Employee Assistance Program; and pet insurance.</span></p> </div> <div>&nbsp;</div> <div><strong>Do your best work, be your authentic self.</strong></div> <div>At Compass, we believe that everyone deserves to find their place in the world — a place where they feel like they belong, where they can be their authentic selves, where they can thrive.&nbsp; Our collaborative, energetic culture is grounded in our<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;"> Compass Entrepreneurship Principles</span>&nbsp;and our commitment to <a href="https://www.compass.com/diversity-inclusion/" target="_blank">diversity, equity, inclusion,</a> growth and mobility. As an equal opportunity employer, we offer competitive compensation packages, robust benefits and professional growth opportunities aimed at helping to improve our employees' lives and careers.</div> <p><a href="https://www.compass.com/ucfe-assets/consumer-footer/5/YCPR-Jan-2019.pdf" target="_blank">Notice for California Applicants</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.compass.com/ucfe-assets/consumer-footer/5/Background%20Check%20LA%20County.pdf" target="_blank">Los Angeles County Fair Chance Notice</a></p></div>