Product Engineering Lead

We're looking for a Product Engineering Lead to own the technical execution and delivery of Athena end-to-end from architecture decisions through shipped features. You'll sit between product vision and engineering reality, translating roadmap into working software while directly managing (or working alongside) contracted developers and engineers building the correlation engine layer.

This is a hands-on leadership role: part technical IC, part team lead, part architecture owner. You'll report directly to the CEO/Founder.

• Own technical delivery across Athena's core modules.
• Translate product roadmap and SOWs into sprint plans, technical specs, and shipped code
• Directly manage or closely coordinate contracted AI/ML developers and engineers
• Make and document architecture decisions (e.g., model selection, vector DB usage, agentic workflow design)
• Drive toward the north-star goal: full triage-and-response workflows through agentic conversational interfaces, no manual dashboards
• Own code quality, technical debt, and engineering velocity across the platform
• Partner with founder/leadership on technical feasibility for enterprise deals, RFPs, and bank/compliance-heavy prospects (PCI-DSS, on-prem hardening)
• Hire, mentor, and eventually build out a small engineering team as the company scales\

• 5+ years of engineering experience, with 2+ years in a technical lead or engineering management capacity
• Strong full-stack or backend chops, comfortable owning architecture end-to-end
• Experience with AI/LLM-integrated products working with LLM APIs (Claude, OpenAI/OpenRouter), vector databases (e.g., Pinecone), and agentic workflow design is a strong plus
• Background in application security, DevSecOps, or security tooling is highly preferred — you understand AppSec concepts natively
• Experience shipping production SaaS at a startup — comfortable with ambiguity, limited resources, and fast iteration
• Proven ability to manage contractors/distributed engineers and keep delivery on track without heavy process overhead
• Strong communicator — able to translate technical trade-offs for both engineers and non-technical stakeholders (including enterprise prospects/compliance reviewers)

• Prior experience in a fractional/part-time leadership capacity balancing multiple commitments
• Familiarity with enterprise security compliance frameworks (PCI-DSS, bank-grade hardening requirements)
• Experience building or contributing to autonomous remediation or agentic security systems