About the job
Join Our Mission at Playlab
Playlab is a pioneering tech non-profit focused on empowering educators and students to become informed consumers and creators of artificial intelligence.
We firmly believe in an open-source, community-centered approach to unlocking AI's potential in education. Our aim is to provide communities with innovative AI tools and hands-on professional development, enabling educators and students to create custom AI applications tailored to their unique needs. To date, over 60,000 educators have successfully published applications on Playlab, with our impact expanding daily.
At Playlab, we view AI as a transformative design material that should be molded by diverse voices to realize their educational visions. If you are passionate about fostering creative and equitable futures for students and teachers, we invite you to be part of our journey.
Your Role
We are looking for a Director of Engineering who will spearhead the growth of our platform, infrastructure, and product engineering teams. In this transformative leadership position, you will enhance our team's capabilities, ensuring that our engineers excel in their craft and deliver impactful systems.
This role is hands-on and requires significant technical expertise in infrastructure and systems design. While you may not be coding daily, your technical credibility is vital for unblocking engineers, guiding architectural choices, and providing effective mentorship. Your primary focus will be on team management, fostering individual growth, and cultivating a culture and processes that enable swift progress on complex challenges.
You will work closely with the Head of Machine Learning, collaborate with product and design teams, and report directly to the CTO. Additionally, you will play a key role in integrating AI throughout our engineering workflows, as we strive to set a global standard for utilizing AI in software development. Our scope is not limited to the U. S.; we have active projects worldwide, contributing to public domain initiatives ranging from educational safety models to research infrastructures and self-hosted deployments.
Key Responsibilities
- Oversee daily operations of the engineering team, including conducting 1:1s and meaningful career development discussions.
- Facilitate weekly tactical coordination across projects, ensuring the team remains aligned and agile in achieving multiple objectives.
- Collaborate with the CTO on technical strategy, architectural decisions, and the engineering roadmap.
- Work alongside the Head of Machine Learning to synchronize platform and ML engineering efforts.
