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Base Operations builds AI-powered physical threat intelligence software for global enterprises and U.S. federal/defense agencies. The company serves a dual-use market: Fortune 500 security teams and U.S. government customers, requiring both commercial velocity and federal-grade rigor.
As Head of Engineering, you will own the technical backbone of the engineering organization at a Series A company scaling rapidly. This is a hybrid IC/leadership role reporting directly to the CEO, positioning you as one of the senior-most technical leaders shaping how the engineering team scales.
Key responsibilities include:
**Data Architecture & Platform Strategy**: Own long-term data architecture across threat intelligence pipelines, ensuring systems scale as data volume, customer count, and federal compliance requirements grow. Make platform decisions (storage, pipelines, data modeling, databases, ML/AI Ops) balancing speed, cost, and dual-use constraints such as data segregation, CUI handling, and FedRAMP/CMMC considerations. Partner with product and GRC on data governance, lineage, and security-by-design.
**Program & Delivery Management**: Implement industry-standard program management discipline for engineering delivery—technical debt tracking, sprint cadences, dependency management, release velocity, and risk surfacing. Own predictability so leadership and the board can trust engineering commitments. Run cross-functional planning with Product and GTM to align engineering output with enterprise and federal sales cycles.
**Software Engineering Leadership**: Stay hands-on in code review, architecture decisions, and unblocking hard technical problems. Set and enforce engineering standards: code quality, testing, CI/CD, security practices, and documentation. Drive decisions on system architecture, tech stack evolution, and technical debt prioritization.
**Team Leadership & People Management**: Manage, mentor, and grow a team of engineers through hiring, performance management, and career development. Build a healthy engineering culture at a scaling stage with clear ownership, high trust, and low ego. Act as connective tissue between individual contributors and company leadership.
**AI Operations & Applied AI Fluency**: Bring native fluency in modern AI development workflows—using AI coding assistants, agentic tools, and LLM-based systems as default practice. Identify where AI can responsibly accelerate engineering velocity and where it introduces risk requiring guardrails. Help define how Base Operations' product uses AI under the hood—model selection, evaluation, reliability, and cost tradeoffs.
Required: 10+ years progressive experience spanning software engineering, data architecture, and engineering management, with at least 3 years in formal people-leadership (Engineering Manager, Director, or equivalent). Demonstrated experience owning data architecture decisions at scale. Strong program/delivery management instincts. Genuine builder background with recent hands-on engineering experience. Proven ability to hire, manage, and grow engineers. Native fluency with modern AI tools (daily use of AI coding assistants/agents). Comfort operating in dual-use environments with security-conscious mindset and willingness to learn federal compliance (FedRAMP, CMMC, CUI handling). Startup experience, ideally Series A–B stage.
Nice to have: Prior experience at companies serving both commercial and federal/defense customers. Experience with threat intelligence, geospatial/OSINT data, or security-adjacent platforms. Existing or prior U.S. government security clearance eligibility. Experience standing up engineering processes from scratch at early-stage companies.
