VP of Engineering

EngineeringNew York, NYFull-Time

About VICO

We are a venture-backed startup revolutionizing AI-powered decision tools. Founded by seasoned leaders from Google, Meta, Bridgewater Associates, Cerberus Capital, and US intelligence agencies, we combine deep industry expertise with world-class AI capabilities to solve complex decision-making challenges across finance, national security and other industries.

This is a unique opportunity to be both at the nexus of world-class AI research and production-grade systems, while operating at a rapid pace to push code to paying customers everyday with a special operations-like team of early-stage engineers and managers.

About the Role

VICO is looking for a VP of Engineering to lead and grow our engineering team. You'll report directly to the CTO and play a lead role in daily engineering execution, team development, and tactical problem-solving as the company accelerates development of scaled architecture. This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll manage a team of junior engineers while helping shape the direction of our product and infrastructure.

We're looking for someone who thrives in a startup environment — someone who's comfortable operating with ambiguity, moving fast, and building both the team and the technology from the ground up.

What You'll Do

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of engineers across the full development lifecycle
Partner closely with the CTO to translate new architecture and company strategy into engineering roadmaps and priorities
Own engineering strategy and execution — delivery cadence, code quality, and platform architecture
Build and refine engineering processes that scale with the team without slowing it down
Drive hiring, onboarding, and retention as the team grows
Champion best practices around LLM integration, evaluation, and deployment
Contribute to technical decision-making around model selection, LLMOps, fine-tuning, and infrastructure for LLM-powered features
Interface with an AI Research & Development Team to evaluate and plan deployment of new models

What We're Looking For

Minimum 5-7 years of engineering management and / or Tech Lead experience, with a track record of leading high-performance teams
Significant startup experience — you've built and shipped in fast-moving, resource-constrained environments and you're energized by it
Hands-on LLM experience — you've worked directly with large language models in a production setting, whether that's building LLM-powered products, managing teams doing so, or both
Experience with our stack or similar technologies (Python, React, PostgreSQL, GCP)
Strong technical foundation with the ability to go deep when needed while staying focused on team-level impact
Experience establishing engineering culture, processes, and norms in early-stage or high-growth companies
Excellent communication skills — you can align engineering work with business goals and communicate effectively across functions
A builder's mindset: pragmatic, resourceful, and biased toward action
Contributions to open-source projects or technical community leadership

Nice to Have

B2B or equivalent experience
Experience scaling an engineering team beyond its current size
Familiarity with model evaluation frameworks and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures
Previous experience in a VP or Director-level engineering role

Compensation

$200,000 - $300,000 + equity package depending on experience

Interested in this role?

If this sounds like you: send your resume and a note telling us why you're the right person to lead engineering at VICO.

Apply Now

or email us directly at careers@vico.io

VICO is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

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