Senior Engineering Manager, AI Product
Job description
About the role
The Senior Engineering Manager, AI Product at cvin.bio will own the end-to-end execution and delivery of the Thunderbolt AI product initiative. This role will be responsible for translating the product vision into a clear engineering roadmap while coordinating priorities across employees, contractors, and external partners. The manager will establish robust release discipline, quality standards, and scalable operating practices as the organization moves from R&D incubation toward enterprise readiness. They will provide hands-on technical leadership by staying deeply engaged with the codebase and guiding architectural and implementation tradeoffs. This position will also own people management practices, including coaching, feedback, and performance support for the engineering team. Ultimately, this role will ensure that Thunderbolt delivers reliable, privacy-respecting AI solutions while maintaining alignment with open source community values and user-first principles.
Key facts
What you'll do
Lead engineering execution by clarifying priorities, ownership, timelines, risks, dependencies, and quality expectations for Thunderbolt product initiatives.
Manage engineers and contractors, including coaching, feedback, prioritization, performance support, and team development across a globally distributed workforce.
Coordinate work across employees, contractors, and technical partners to maintain alignment and momentum across the Thunderbolt product lifecycle.
Define what production-ready means for Thunderbolt by establishing stronger release discipline, clearer ownership, and higher user-facing product quality.
Stay closely engaged with the codebase and technical execution to evaluate engineering work credibly and support architectural and implementation tradeoffs.
Help the team deliver a reliable, enterprise-ready open-source AI product by driving scalable operating models and robust engineering practices.
Collaborate with product and design partners to translate user needs and feedback into clear technical requirements and executable plans.
Work with security and privacy teams to ensure that AI workflows and data handling meet the highest standards of user control and data protection.
Own operational processes such as planning, tracking, and retrospectives to drive continuous improvement in team performance and delivery outcomes.
Represent Thunderbolt in cross-functional discussions, communicating progress, risks, and dependencies to stakeholders and partners as needed.
Contribute to hiring decisions by partnering on interview processes, defining role requirements, and assessing technical and cultural fit for engineering positions.
Support career development and mentorship within the team, helping engineers grow their skills and advance their contributions to the project.
Ensure that engineering practices align with the open source development model and community expectations around transparency, collaboration, and user-first design.
Provide regular status updates and documentation to maintain visibility into engineering progress, dependencies, and risk mitigation efforts.
Requirements
Bring 8+ years of experience in software engineering or technical management roles with a strong track record of delivering complex products.
Have 3+ years of people management experience, with demonstrated success in coaching, feedback, and performance development for engineering teams.
Possess strong technical depth and credibility to evaluate architectural decisions, tradeoffs, and implementation details in an AI product context.
Show experience managing distributed or globally remote teams, with proven ability to drive alignment without proximity bias.
Demonstrate fluency in release management, quality standards, and operational practices that support production-ready software delivery.
Have experience working with open source communities and contributing to projects that emphasize transparency, collaboration, and user control.
Show strong judgment in prioritization, risk management, and dependency coordination across multiple stakeholders and workstreams.
Communicate clearly and persuasively, with the ability to translate technical concepts into actionable plans for both technical and non-technical audiences.
Nice to have
Experience with AI product development, machine learning workflows, or privacy-preserving AI technologies.
Background in Mozilla or Thunderbird-related projects, or work on browser-related ecosystems and extension platforms.
Experience contributing to or managing open source projects at scale with enterprise adoption considerations.
Practical notes
This is a full-time role based in Remote Canada.
Travel is not required for this position.
No visa sponsorship information is provided at this time.
No application deadline is specified in the source material.