VP of Engineering

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VP of Engineering 

Are you ready for your breakthrough job? BlastPoint has the AI Engineering Rocketship for you.

BlastPoint is seeking an engineering leader who is a builder at heart and believes the future of software is being written right now — with AI at the center of every decision. We're looking for someone who has scaled engineering organizations through high-growth phases, knows what it means to own delivery end-to-end, and is ready to define what a modern engineering org looks like when the majority of the code is AI-assisted and the product is an economic indicator used by entire industries.

This position demands intensity, technical depth, and the ability to make decisions with limited information on the table. We're seeking someone who thrives in ambiguity, moves at startup speed, unpredictability and understands that perfection is the enemy of shipping. 

This isn't a typical VP of Engineering role. This is a call to arms for a builder.

BlastPoint's platform is becoming the economic indicator for customer intelligence — the thing utilities, credit unions, and financial institutions check before making decisions that affect millions of Americans. Our data covers 25% of U.S. consumers through a proprietary payment behavior dataset that no one else has. We're not bolting AI onto an existing product. AI and ML are the entire product — from autonomous data pipelines to predictive models to agentic workflows that are replacing manual processes in real time.

You'll be the person who decides how this engineering org evolves to match that ambition. We're not looking for someone to maintain what exists. We're looking for someone to architect what comes next.

Why This Opportunity Matters

The timing couldn't be better. Following a successful Series A, BlastPoint is entering a hyper-growth phase. We've proven our value with major utilities and financial service providers, and we're expanding into new verticals. Our clients see clear, measurable ROI, and our reference-ability is off the charts.

You'll be stepping into a role where:

• You're taking over the engineering function from a founders (our CEO & CTO) who built the technical foundation and are ready to hand you the keys. This isn't a rescue mission — it's an acceleration mission.
• The product is proven, the clients are referenceable, and the market need is urgent across multiple regulated industries.
• You'll have creative control over the stack, the org design, and the development culture. We have strong opinions loosely held — we need someone who brings their own.
• AI isn't a feature here — it's the foundation. You'll be leading a team where autonomous intelligence pipelines, ML model deployment, and agentic architectures are the core product, not a side project.
• You'll be building the engineering org of the future, answering questions like;
• What does QA look like when AI writes 75% of the code? 
• How do you structure teams — Navy SEAL pods or traditional hierarchy? 
• What's the right balance between speed and technical debt? 
• This role has executive visibility with direct communication with the board.
• You won't be buried behind a layer of management — you'll be presenting technical strategy directly to our investors and shaping how they think about our trajectory.

The Role & Team Context

This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll be inheriting a talented but scaling engineering organization that's in the midst of a significant upgrade — increasing velocity, modernizing infrastructure, and preparing for the next phase of growth. You won't be a bystander in this transformation. You'll be the architect.

You'll partner directly with our CEO, CTO, and Director of Product to translate business strategy into engineering execution. Your success will be measured by one thing: the speed and quality at which we ship value to customers.

We need someone who can simultaneously hold the strategic view (where is this org in 12 months?) and the operational view (why is this sprint behind and what do we do about it right now?). You'll manage and mentor the existing team, recruit the next wave of talent, and set the technical and cultural bar for how engineering operates at BlastPoint.

We're at a stage where speed is more important than perfection. We are a culture of experimentation. We have a destination in mind, but we often take two or three different paths to get there. The right person for this role finds that energizing, not terrifying.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering delivery end-to-end — sprint planning, resource allocation, release management, and the quality bar for everything that ships.
• Define the long-term technical strategy and architecture vision, ensuring alignment with company objectives, scalability, and market opportunity.
• Build, manage, and mentor a high-performing engineering team, fostering a culture of ownership, accountability, and speed.
• Recruit and onboard top engineering talent to scale the team in line with growth objectives.
• Drive a modern, AI-forward development culture — define how AI-assisted coding, automated testing, and agentic workflows integrate into the daily engineering practice.
• Remove roadblocks ruthlessly. Anticipate where the bottlenecks will be before they arrive. Your job is to make the team faster.
• Establish and refine engineering best practices — code review, CI/CD, testing, incident response, infrastructure-as-code — without letting process calcify into bureaucracy.
• Manage cross-functional collaboration between Engineering, Data Science, Product, and Customer Success.
• Use data to improve output — cycle time, deployment frequency, reliability. Measure what matters and cut what doesn't.
• Present to the board on engineering strategy, technical health, and organizational progress.
• Support customer-facing technical conversations when needed — sales engineering, technical due diligence, customer escalations.

Requirements

• 5+ years in a VP of Engineering, Engineering Director, or equivalent leadership role, managing software engineering teams including hiring, performance management, and team development. Venture-backed startup experience strongly preferred.
• Proven track record of scaling engineering organizations at high-growth startups (Series A through Series C experience is ideal).
• Deep technical background with hands-on experience in Python, cloud infrastructure (AWS required), and building data-intensive applications.
• Experience with AWS services such as SageMaker, ECS/EKS, Lambda, RDS, and S3 in production environments.
• Experience leading teams that build and maintain AI/ML platforms, data pipelines, or SaaS products that process large-scale datasets.
• Strong understanding of modern development practices — Agile, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, microservices, containerization — with opinions about what actually works vs. what's theater.
• Excellent communication skills. You can translate between engineering and the boardroom without losing signal in either direction.
• A growth mindset with a bias for action. Comfortable making decisions with imperfect information and iterating quickly.
• Strong preference for candidates from nimble, scrappy environments rather than large corporate backgrounds. We need builders, not maintainers.

Nice to Haves

• Familiarity with machine learning workflows, model deployment, and MLOps tooling.
• Experience with geospatial data, customer analytics, or intelligence platforms.
• Background in regulated industries — energy, utilities, financial services, insurance.
• Contributions to open-source projects or a strong public engineering presence.
• Pet projects you're genuinely excited about. Show us what you build when nobody's watching.

What Sets You Apart

• You have a bias toward shipping that borders on obsessive.
• You've built engineering orgs, not just managed inherited ones.
• You can hold the strategic view and the operational view in the same breath.
• You have strong opinions about how engineering should work in 2026, and you're ready to prove them.
• You're not afraid of hard conversations — with your team, with other executives, or with customers.
• You see AI-assisted development as a fundamental shift in how engineering orgs are structured, not just a productivity tool.
• You take full ownership and don't make excuses — this means outcomes over effort.
• You wake up thinking about engineering velocity and go to bed thinking about what you're going to ship tomorrow.

Ideal candidates will match one or more of these profiles:

• A Director of Engineering ready to step into their first VP role with real ownership and board visibility.
• A VP who has been through a significant scaling journey and wants to do it again with a better stack and a smarter team.
• A technical leader who has been the #2 or #3 at a company that scaled from early stage to $20M+ ARR and is ready to be the #1.
• Someone who has spent time at a larger org but is genuinely hungry to get back to building — and can prove it.

Location, Compensation & Benefits

• Location: Remote (U.S.), with occasional travel to Pittsburgh HQ and company events (2-4x/year).
• Compensation: $200K-$250K base + performance bonus + 0.25-0.5% equity.
• Benefits: 
• Health, dental, and vision insurance. 
• 401(k). 
• 3 weeks PTO + 10 paid holidays + unlimited sick time. 
• $500 home office stipend. 
• Flexible work culture — we mean it. Our team works hard, but we all still take time to pick up the kids, take the dog to the vet, or take a walk to think through a problem
• Must be authorized to work in the United States.