Manager, AI Engineering

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation. The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.
• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.
• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo, to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Transparency, Collaboration, Operational Excellence, Ownership, and Empathy. We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture.

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

We are looking for an experienced software engineering leader providing broad tech leadership to our AI engineering team. You will own and drive Phaidra’s core AI/ML platform technologies with a forward looking orientation towards the advancement of reinforcement learning agents and good MLOps practices.

You have the motivation and skills to identify technical product needs, initiate projects and own their delivery, including the involvement of engineering peers as needed. You are comfortable with challenging the status quo respectfully to drive and deliver technical excellence in the team.

You will understand technical details of your team’s work - often providing technical guidance as and when required. Leading by example, you have accumulated a wealth of insights and experiences from your hands-on involvement in the field, and you remain committed to rolling up your sleeves to support your team.

You know how to lead and manage a team and engineering projects to succeed on the implementation and operations of scalable AI solutions. You excel in orchestrating these endeavors in an entirely remote work setting, showcasing your prowess in managing and guiding distributed teams.

We are seeking a team member located within one of the following areas: USA, UK, or Canada.

In the United States, we accept applicants located in the following states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington. In Canada, we accept applicants located in the following provinces: Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta.

Responsibilities

The AI engineering team led by you is responsible for building the core platform that powers model training, inference, and decision making for our agen