Vice President - Application Engineering

VP, Application Engineering

About Sand

Sand Technologies is a global Physical AI company using data and AI to make critical industries work better. We partner with governments, cities and enterprises to improve how essential systems operate across healthcare, water, energy, telecommunications and infrastructure.

Our work delivers proven real-world impact. We have built AI systems that help manage London’s water supply, supported telecom network planning across hundreds of cities, and developed digital healthcare platforms serving tens of millions of people across Africa. From intelligent command centers to AI-powered infrastructure platforms, we help organizations sense, analyze and act in complex environments.

Our people are ambitious, curious and relentlessly practical. Our teams work alongside clients in the field, solving hard problems and deploying solutions that last. With colleagues across Africa, Europe, the UK and the US, we operate across the full stack - from research and engineering to deployment and capability building.

Our mission is simple: to harness AI to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges.

About the role

As VP, Application Engineering, you will run Application Engineering across all of our US Public and Private Sector work. Your core responsibility is to build and lead a nation-wide team of engineers to solve customer problems quickly and profitably using Sand’s Symmetri Platform. You will play a key role in shaping the product roadmap with real customer insights.

This critical leadership role requires the orchestration of multi-disciplinary teams, including data scientists, data engineers, software engineers, product managers and designers, to deliver high-quality results that meet client needs. You will manage timelines, resources, budgets, and delivery quality to ensure not only client satisfaction but the creation of innovative, scalable solutions built on Symmetri.

Beyond delivery, you will build out our US Application Engineering capability — creating a flywheel of high-quality talent — partner with our GTM teams to grow new and existing client accounts, and work closely with Product to ensure client insights feed directly into our product roadmaps.

What you’ll do

• End-to-End Delivery Leadership: Lead and oversee the full delivery of our application engineering on Symmetri, ensuring adherence to the highest standards of quality, timeliness, and client value. Manage technical teams, drive resource efficiency, and ensure every initiative aligns with clients' strategic, business, and regulatory goals.
• Symmetri Platform Leverage: Deliver client value through the Symmetri platform — establishing patterns, reusable components, and delivery practices so teams solve customer problems with the platform's core tools rather than rebuilding from scratch.
• Build the US Application Engineering Capability: Build out the US Application Engineering function — a flywheel of high-quality talent. Attract, hire, develop, and retain exceptional engineers and scientists, creating the standards, career paths, and culture that make the capability self-reinforcing as it scales.
• Product Partnership: Work closely with Product, using client insights from the field to feed back into product roadmaps — ensuring what we learn on the ground shapes what we build into Symmetri.
• GTM Partnership & Growth: Partner with our GTM teams to pursue and win new business in the US, presenting compelling solutions that address client challenges across the public and private sector. Assist with scoping projects, developing proposals, and securing new logos while contributing to account growth and expansion.
• Client Engagement & Satisfaction: Build trusted relationships with senior stakeholders within client organizations, driving high satisfaction (CSAT) scores and ensuring accounts are primed for future growth. Act as a strategic technical advisor, providing insights that help clients unlock the full potential of AI.
• Innovation & Technical Excellence: Drive continuous improvement and innovation by fostering a culture of creativity and technical excellence. Lead the development of proofs of concept that demonstrate our industry-leading capabilities, supporting wider product development and deployment initiatives.

Who you are

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• A minimum of 10+ years of technical experience in software engineering, data science, or a relevant technical field, with a strong understanding of software development, IT, and data engineering principles.
• Proven leadership experience building, managing, and scaling highly technical teams.
• Demonstrated success building and nurturing senior-level client relationships, with a track record of delivering AI and software programs that achieve tangible business outcomes.
• Experience delivering on or building platform-based products and reusable componentry.
• Experience in dynamic, high-growth environments, including new ventures or scaling businesses, is highly advantageous.
• US-based, with eligibility to work in the United States.

Key Skills

• Technical Expertise: Deep expertise in data science, AI, and related technologies. You should be adept at managing the end-to-end delivery of complex AI programs, with a focus on driving client value through innovation and operational excellence.
• Client-Centric Approach: Strong commercial acumen with the ability to scope and sell AI projects. You will support GTM efforts by crafting compelling proposals and working closely with clients to understand their strategic challenges.
• Leadership & Strategy: A natural leader who excels at navigating cross-functional teams, managing stakeholders, and aligning delivery with both client expectations and broader company goals. You'll need a strategic mindset with the ability to drive both client and account growth.

Key Competencies

• Self-Starter & Innovator: Highly motivated and curious, with a passion for problem-solving. You should have a track record of driving initiatives and achieving results in ambiguous or rapidly changing environments.
• Strategic Thinker: Demonstrated ability to quickly grasp complex industry challenges, create innovative solutions, and translate them into actionable strategies for clients.
• Relationship Building: Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage and influence senior executives. You'll be adept at translating technical AI concepts into business-focused discussions.
• Market Insight: Provide valuable industry intelligence regarding competitive offerings and market trends, helping shape both product roadmaps and GTM strategies.
• Talent Development: Support the growth and development of technical teams, ensuring continuous skills development, succession planning, and a sustained flywheel of high-quality talent.
• Product Engineering: Build a culture that understands the power of product and builds reusable components that compound with each deployment, rapidly reducing time to value, increasing speed of deployment and delivering high gross margins. 

How we work

Due to the highly collaborative and internationally distributed nature of our work, successful candidates must be comfortable operating in small teams while contributing to larger, globally coordinated efforts. A strong sense of ownership, self-motivation and discipline in maintaining clear and consistent communication through virtual collaboration tools and video conferencing is essential.