Technical Lead Manager (TLM) - AI Systems & AgentsThe Role: Player-Coach LeadershipThis is an high-impact, low-bureaucracy role designed for a world-class systems engineer and builder. We keep our teams intentionally lean and fast. You will serve as a
Player-Coach leading a tight, elite squad of 3 to 5 AI systems engineers.
At Instabase, we believe managers of small teams should stay close to the metal. Your time will be split:
- 60% to 70% Hands-on Engineering: Actively designing multi-turn agent loops, writing production code, building secure sandboxing environments, and architecting systems.
- 30% to 40% Leadership & Mentorship: Recruiting top-tier talent, mentoring engineers, reviewing PRs, and aligning product roadmaps with technical execution.
What You Will Do- Architect Stateful Agent Loops: Design and implement highly reliable, multi-turn agentic planning and execution state machines capable of self-correction, tool orchestration, and long-context memory persistence.
- Build Secure Execution Sandboxes: Own the runtime execution layer where model-generated code (such as Python data-analysis scripts) is safely isolated, monitored, and run in real-time without compromising enterprise security boundaries.
- Pioneer Tool Orchestration & MCP: Expand our agent capabilities by designing composable tool-calling integrations using Model Context Protocol (MCP) and custom API interfaces.
- Build Evaluation & Trajectory Testing Harnesses: Establish programmatic frameworks (using LLM-as-a-judge and trajectory evaluations) to test if agent loops, tool-calling selections, and error recoveries behave safely and deterministically.
- Scale High-Performance Systems: Work on deep systems problems including latency optimization, semantic caching, speculative execution, and streaming intermediate agent states for a responsive user experience.
- Scale the Team: Bootstrap, hire, and mentor a small, elite, high-velocity team of software and AI engineers.
Our Technical Stack- Orchestration & Frameworks: LangGraph, LangChain, Go/Python, React, Node, Next.js.
- Infrastructure & Security: Secure sandboxed runtimes (Docker, gVisor, WebAssembly), GCP, AWS, Kubernetes, Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB), Redis, Pub/Sub.
- AI & Models: Integration with advanced reasoning models (GPT-4o, o3, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, DeepSeek) across custom function-calling, LLM fine-tuning, and hybrid vector-search RAG pipelines.
- Standards: Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool schemas and APIs.
About You- 8+ Years of Professional Engineering Experience: A strong, proven background in software engineering, with significant tenure building and scaling backend systems, infrastructure, or platform services.
- Active LLM & Agentic Engineering Experience: Practical, hands-on experience building production-grade LLM applications, multi-agent workflows (using DAGs or state machines), or tool-calling executors.
- Systems & Infrastructure Rigor: Deep familiarity with building secure sandboxed runtimes, container isolation, API platforms, caching strategies, or high-throughput real-time data streaming.
- Small-Team Leadership Experience: Proven track record of mentoring senior engineers, driving technical design reviews, and leading high-velocity squads as a Tech Lead, TLM, or hands-on EM.
- An Active Builder: You love writing code. You are excited about the prospect of coding daily and staying out of the meetings and administrative bloat of traditional big-tech management.
- Educational Background: BS, MS, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a highly quantitative field.
Compensation: The base salary range for this role is $230,00 to $270,000 + bonus, equity, and benefits. The actual pay may vary based on factors such as location, experience, and skills.
US Benefits:- Flexible PTO: Because life is better when you actually live it!
- Comprehensive Coverage: Top-notch medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- 401(k) with Matching: We've got your back for a secure future.
- Parental Leave & Fertility Benefits: Supporting you in growing your family, your way.
- Therapy Sessions Covered: Mental health matters- 10 free sessions through Samata Health.
- Wellness Stipend: For gym memberships, fitness tech, or whatever keeps you thriving.
- Lunch on Us: Enjoy a lunch credit when you're in the office.
#Li-Hybrid
