SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Cartesia is hiring an Engineering Manager to lead and grow the Product Engineering team. The company is pioneering AI model architectures, founded by Stanford PhD researchers who invented State Space Models (SSMs). The team is backed by leading investors including Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others.
In this player-coach role, you'll lead product engineers building surfaces around Cartesia's models—including Voices, Voice Agents, self-serve growth, billing, and shared infrastructure. You'll contribute directly to important technical work while hiring, mentoring, and establishing the operating rhythm needed to ship exceptional products consistently. You'll initially embed with the Voices squad and help establish clear ownership across product surfaces spanning teams.
Key responsibilities include:
- Building alongside the team and contributing directly to product and technical work, especially during team growth
- Leading and developing product engineers through coaching, feedback, career development, and maintaining high performance standards
- Growing the Product Engineering team through personal sourcing, interviewing, and closing exceptional engineers
- Partnering closely with Product and Design to shape direction, make strong technical tradeoffs, and ship polished experiences
- Establishing predictable execution cadence without unnecessary process or loss of speed
- Raising quality through hands-on design and code review, strong technical judgment, and modeling excellent product engineering
- Taking ownership of cross-cutting surfaces including billing, files, and team rotations, stepping into work directly when needed
- Defining how Product Engineering evolves as the team grows while remaining close to customers, product, and code
The company operates in-person from offices in San Francisco, London, and Bangalore, with a culture focused on shipping fast, maintaining high quality, and supporting team members. They provide visa sponsorship on a case-by-case basis.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 6+ years of product engineering experience, including leading or managing engineers at a company with a high product bar
- Strong current technical ability and credibility to contribute to architecture, design reviews, debugging, and production-quality code
- Experience building polished, customer-facing product surfaces and product taste to explain what makes an experience excellent
- Track record of coaching engineers, giving direct and useful feedback, handling performance issues, and helping people expand scope
- Evidence of leading through context, judgment, and contribution—not only through reporting lines or process
- Strong cross-functional instincts and experience working directly with Product and Design to set direction and make difficult tradeoffs
- Track record of hiring strong product engineers in a competitive market, including personal sourcing and closing
- Comfort moving between visible product work and unglamorous foundations such as billing, files, operational ownership, and on-call health
- Ability to operate with urgency and clarity in a fast-moving environment where team and roadmap are still taking shape
- Genuine excitement about voice AI and building the product layer on top of state-of-the-art models
NICE-TO-HAVES:
- Experience in developer tools, AI infrastructure, or products built for technical users
- Experience helping grow a product engineering team from roughly 5 to 15 engineers while remaining hands-on
- Experience with PLG, self-serve growth, billing, or other end-to-end product surfaces
