From Junior AI's posting. “We” and “our” refer to the employer.
👶 About Junior
Junior is building the AI operating system for investment research.
Our software helps private equity firms, consultants and financial institutions complete high-stakes research workflows dramatically faster — from diligence and memo writing to market mapping, research synthesis and strategic analysis.
We’re building toward a future where AI can run substantially more of that work: conducting research, understanding evidence and producing outputs customers can use to make decisions.
Bootstrapped and profitable
~$28M+ ARR, after growing 10x last year
65+ people across New York, London and Sydney
~20-person engineering team across four to five teams
Trusted by leading private equity firms, consultancies and financial institutions
Core stack: TypeScript, Next.js and PostgreSQL
AI-assisted development has already changed how quickly we can build. Our current engineering team operates with the output of a much larger organization — and that pace is only increasing.
We’re now looking for someone to build the engineering organization for Junior’s next chapter.
💡 The role
You’ll report to our CTO and own the day-to-day operation of engineering: people, planning, delivery, reliability and recruiting.
The CTO will continue to own product and technology direction, frontier experimentation, AI-native development and consequential long-term architecture.
You’ll turn that direction into results.
You’ll have the authority to challenge scope, sequencing and commitments when they aren’t credible — and the responsibility to make sure the organization delivers on the ones it makes.
This is not a role where you spend your first three months observing from the sidelines.
You’ll begin by doing the work:
Ship production code
Learn our systems and development tools
Join architecture and debugging discussions
Work directly with engineers, Product and customers
Take an on-call shift
Build firsthand context before changing how the organization operates
You’ll progressively take ownership of engineering operations, but this will remain a deeply technical leadership role. You’ll stay close to the code, architecture and important production problems.
🎯 What you’ll own
Delivery:
Set clear priorities, owners and achievable scope across Engineering, Product and Design
Engineering leadership:
Develop hands-on Engineering Leads who can run strong, autonomous teams
Organization design:
Build a lean organization capable of growing toward 40–60 engineers where the business justifies it
Recruiting:
Own engineering hiring and help us maintain a very high technical bar as the team grows
People:
Lead feedback, performance and development while giving excellent ICs room to grow without becoming managers
Reliability:
Establish clear ownership of critical systems, improve incident response and eliminate recurring failures
Engineering effectiveness:
Remove friction across tooling, testing, reviews and delivery
AI-native development:
Turn AI-assisted engineering into measurable improvements in speed and quality
Financial ownership:
Own engineering’s infrastructure, tooling and AI spend — and be accountable for the value we get from it
The goal is not to add process for the sake of it. It’s to introduce structure where it helps us move faster — and remove it when it doesn’t.
🚀 What success looks like
In your first 90 days
You’ve shipped meaningful production code
You understand the systems, team and customers
You’ve earned technical trust across the organization
You’ve established clear operating baselines
You’ve identified a small number of high-impact improvements grounded in firsthand experience
By six months
You own routine engineering operations and most engineering recruiting
Every team has clear ownership and strong leadership
Commitments are more credible and risks surface earlier
The CTO spends substantially less time assigning work and chasing project updates
Engineering ships faster with fewer recurring failures
Engineers still have autonomy, direct founder access and room to pursue ambitious ideas
The impact of engineering work is clearly connected to customer and business outcomes
🔥 About you
You’re still deeply technical and can write production code, understand unfamiliar systems and debug difficult problems
You’ve led engineering teams through meaningful growth and ambiguity
You can point to specific improvements you’ve made across delivery, reliability and organizational clarity
You’ve hired excellent engineers and developed strong ICs and engineering leaders
You’re comfortable giving difficult feedback and making performance decisions
You know when management and process help — and when they get in the way
You’ve built software where reliability, security and customer trust genuinely matter
You use AI development tools thoughtfully and have strong views on how they will change engineering teams
You can challenge a highly technical founder constructively
You want to work closely with Product, customers and the codebase
You’re based in New York, or committed to relocating, and excited to work with the team in person
We care far more about what you’ve personally built, owned and improved than your previous title.
Prior VP or Head of Engineering experience is not required.
About this listing
LAYIQ is an independent job-discovery service. This listing does not imply a partnership with or endorsement by the employer. Review the original posting for current details and availability.
