Software Engineering Manager @ Vannevar Labs

AI & Machine Learning (1)

Vannevar is a defense technology company building AI to deter our adversaries. In the 21st century, conflict moves at algorithmic speed and foresight equals firepower. Our agentic AI is purpose-built to compete with China—from cross-Strait conflict to gray zone coercion. Trained on the most mission-relevant datasets in defense, our technology models adversary behavior, simulates campaigns, and recommends the best course of action to decision makers. Our AI systems are some of the most trusted in the industry and actively used on the front lines of the Indo-Pacific to keep the peace and save lives.

Exceptional technology starts with exceptional people. Vannevar is a small agile team combining world-class engineers with veteran strategists who bring deep expertise in defense and tradecraft. We’re building a company defined by mission impact, user empathy, and disciplined growth. In just three years, we grew from $3M to $80M in ARR, achieved early profitability, and reached unicorn status—proving that disruption doesn’t require an ego, and staying power doesn’t mean standing still.

About the role

We’re looking for a talented Software Engineering Manager to lead our Machine Learning Platform team, focused on building the infrastructure and tooling that powers ML model training, deployment, and experimentation across Vannevar’s products. This includes orchestration pipelines, scalable serving systems, evaluation frameworks, and APIs that accelerate the work of internal ML and product teams building for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Your team will support a wide range of model types, including large language models (LLMs), computer vision models, entity recognition systems, classifiers, and gradient-boosted decision trees across diverse architectures and use cases. You’ll be responsible for enabling seamless integration of these models into production environments, while also supporting robust evaluation and observability. This platform plays a foundational role in helping research and product teams move quickly, iterate safely, and deliver high-impact machine learning features across the company.

What you’ll do

ML Platform Engineering: Design and build scalable infrastructure for model training, serving, evaluation, and observability. Own the systems that power rapid iteration and deployment of LLMs and other ML models.

Developer Acceleration: Reduce friction and duplication across teams by building unified APIs, workflows, and platform services that enable fast and reliable experimentation.

Data and Pipeline Management: Lead development of durable, high-throughput ML pipelines that support ingestion, preprocessing, and versioning of complex multimodal datasets.

Collaboration: Partner with ML practitioners, DevOps, and product teams to ensure infrastructure is aligned with evolving product and research needs.

Team Leadership: Grow and mentor a high-performing team of ML and systems engineers. Foster a strong engineering culture focused on pragmatism, velocity, and impact.

What we look for

3+ years of experience in leading machine learning or machine learning platform teams.

5+ years of experience as a machine learning or data engineer.

Experience managing ML training and serving infrastructure, including orchestration tools like Ray, Anyscale, or Kubeflow, and observability stacks for experiments and production models.

Familiarity with deep learning model development (using Pytorch, TensorFlow, or Jax) and deployment workflows, including fine-tuning, evaluation, and scalable inference.

Proficiency in cloud-native engineering (AWS), infrastructure as code (Terraform or Pulumi), and durable workflow engines like Temporal or Airflow.

Bias toward shipping practical, high-leverage infrastructure that accelerates ML teams and balances speed with reliability.

High ethical standards for handling sensitive data, ensuring adherence to data privacy rules and compliance standards.

Willingness to travel to offsite and team syncs ~4 weeks per year.

Excellent communication skills, teamwork abilities, and project ownership.

U.S. Citizenship (required to access U.S.-only data systems).

What we offer

The salary range for this position is $200,000 - $240,000 + equity + 401K match. Within the range, individual pay is determined by experience, relevant education, and/or training.

We’re proud to offer competitive benefits that support our employees. Some key highlights of our benefits package include:

Health, dental, and vision insurance
100% remote first culture. You can work from anywhere in the US and all full time employees have WeWork access
Unlimited PTO including competitive vacation and holiday schedules
Lifestyle stipends - Monthly mental health, wellness & fitness stipend, in-home office setup stipend and family planning assistance
Salary top-up during military reserve duty
Fully paid parental leave
Child and pet care reimbursement during travel

Vannevar Labs is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, protected veteran status, or disability status.

We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply, even if you don't feel like you're a perfect fit. If you're passionate about contributing to our mission, we'd love to hear from you!

IMPORTANT NOTICE
We are committed to protecting the privacy of all applicants. Official emails from the company will come from an @vannevarlabs.com domain. Under no circumstances will a legitimate representative from our company contact you to request passwords, financial information, or other sensitive personal data. Please be vigilant of potential scams.

Software Engineering Manager

Machine Learning Platform

Vannevar Labs

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