Vice President – Head of Engineering

MISSION

BankGPT is building the AI that knows your entire financial life — every account, every dollar, every goal — and acts on your behalf to make you wealthier. We’re building a product that will reach hundreds of millions of Americans. 55% of Americans already use AI for financial tasks. 86% say it helps them understand their finances. Yet no product today combines real AI intelligence with full access to a person’s real financial data. That’s the gap we exist to close.

You will be one of the first engineers at BankGPT. What you build will ship to real users within weeks, not quarters.

THE ROLE

We're looking for a Vice President of Engineering who has been here before — not just managed engineers, but built an engineering organization from the ground up during a period of real growth. Someone who has scaled a technical team through a Series A → B → C transition, maintained quality while moving fast, and emerged on the other side with a functioning, high-trust engineering culture.

You'll partner directly with our Co-Founder Bruce Kim on technical strategy and architecture, work closely with CEO Srinivas Njay on product vision and company direction, and own the end-to-end engineering function. You'll manage existing engineers, build out the team aggressively over the next 12–18 months, and set the standards that will define how BankGPT ships software for years to come.

This is a player-coach role at the start. You'll be in the architecture discussions, the code reviews, and the late Friday PRs — and you'll also be building the org, running the recruiting pipeline, and presenting engineering strategy to the board. If that breadth energizes you, this is your role.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN

• Engineering organization design and growth — build a world-class team from ~10 to 50+ engineers, including hiring for Staff, Senior, and mid-level roles across platform, AI, and frontend

• Technical vision and architecture — partner with Bruce Kim to define the platform strategy, drive architectural decisions, and ensure our systems scale with our ambitions

• Engineering velocity and quality — establish the processes, tooling, and culture that let teams ship fast without accruing technical debt that kills momentum

• Cross-functional leadership — serve as the engineering voice in product, design, and executive conversations; translate business priorities into engineering roadmaps and vice versa

• Agentic AI and conversational AI platform — own the evolution of the platform layer that powers our real-time AI products, including LLM orchestration, retrieval systems, and integration infrastructure

• AI-native engineering culture — embed AI development tools (Claude Code, Cursor) as standard practice, and build a team fluent in building on top of frontier AI models

• Recruiting and talent brand — make BankGPT the place top SF engineers want to work; own the technical interview process, the offer strategy, and the employer brand in the market

• Eng/Ops excellence — drive incident response, observability, reliability targets, and the engineering rituals (planning, retrospectives, tech reviews) that keep a fast-moving team aligned

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 10+ years of software engineering, with the last 4–6 in engineering leadership roles at high-growth startups or scale-ups

• Proven track record of building and scaling engineering teams — you've grown a team through a funding transition and have the org design scars and wins to show for it

• Deep technical credibility — you can hold your own in a system design conversation with a Staff Engineer, review a PR meaningfully, and debate architectural trade-offs without deferring to someone else's opinion

• Hands-on platform engineering background — you understand distributed systems, API design, cloud architecture, and the operational realities of running production AI systems at scale

• AI engineering fluency — you know how LLMs work, how to build reliable systems on top of them, and what "agentic AI" means at the infrastructure level, not just the product level

• Experience with TypeScript, Python, or both at a production scale; comfort across the backend/frontend divide

• Exceptional people leadership — engineers want to work for you, not just with you; you develop talent, resolve conflict cleanly, and make hard calls without drama

• Strong product intuition — you understand why decisions get made, not just what was decided; you can push back on the roadmap and propose better paths without losing the relationship

• BS/BA in Computer Science required; MS or PhD in CS, AI, or related field is a strong plus

• San Francisco-based; committed to 5 days/week in the office — this is a culture and collaboration role as much as a technical one

BONUS POINTS

• Domain experience in conversational AI, voice AI, or agentic systems at production scale

• Background in fintech, banking, or regulated financial services

• Experience as a VP or Director of Engineering at a company that went from Series A to Series C+

• Track record of building high-performing engineering teams (US + international)

• Published writing, conference talks, or open-source contributions in AI systems, platform engineering, or engineering leadership

WHAT THIS ROLE IS — AND ISN'T

This is not a title for someone who wants to run a staff meeting and attend a leadership offsite. You will be the person who makes engineering real at BankGPT — the one who decides how we hire, how we ship, how we recover from incidents, and how we grow engineers into leaders. You'll have a seat at every table that matters.

It's also not a role for someone who needs a mature org to manage. We're 30 people building something hard in a space that's moving faster than most companies can track. If that sounds like a burden, this isn't the right fit. If it sounds like exactly the kind of leverage point you've been looking for, we want to talk.

Benefits

🩺 100% paid health, dental & vision care

💰 401(k) & financial wellness perks

🍜 Daily meals on us

🚇 Commuter benefit

💪 Monthly wellness stipend

🤖 Claude Enterprise + frontier AI tools for every employee — build with the best

🏙️ Brand-new 21st-floor SF office at 44 Montgomery — floor-to-ceiling views, worth showing up to

🌴 Discretionary PTO + paid parental leave

🧘 Mental health, wellness & family benefits

🚀 A mission-driven team shaping the future of banking