Software Engineering Manager (Agentic AI Applications)

As the Engineering Lead, you will lead the team building a newly launched AI-first product with direct revenue impact. Our platform analyzes client communications and engagement signals to help mortgage bankers, the sales professionals who guide clients through home financing, focus on the clients most likely to convert. Your team builds agentic AI applications: systems where agents reason, plan, use tools, and act on their own to drive real business outcomes. This is a player‑coach role. You'll spend real time in the code: shaping architecture, reviewing designs, building critical pieces yourself, and setting the technical bar by example. At the same time, you'll own the health and direction of the team: hiring, growing engineers, setting priorities with product partners, and making sure the team ships things that matter. AI is not a side tool here. You'll use it as a core part of how you and the team design, code, test, debug, review, and ship software. The ideal candidate is a strong engineer who genuinely wants to lead: someone energized by building a team and a product at the same time, and by defining what AI-native engineering looks like in practice. This is a rare setup. You get the autonomy, pace, and greenfield ownership of an early‑stage startup, backed by the stability, resources, and built-in distribution of an established company. The product just launched, usage is growing, and both the architecture and the team are still being shaped. You won't inherit someone else's team or someone else's technical decisions. You'll build both, and your choices will define how this product and this team work for years. You'll also get access to frontier AI development tools, including AI coding agents like Claude Code, as a core and funded part of how the team works. About The Role Lead a team of engineers building agentic AI capabilities such as agent orchestration, tool calling, retrieval‑augmented workflows, and LLM‑powered features. Stay hands‑on: contribute to architecture, write and review code, and build critical components alongside the team. Own the technical strategy for the platform, balancing speed, scalability, maintainability, and business impact. Set the standard for evaluation, observability, and guardrails for AI agents, ensuring reliability, safety, and measurable quality in production. Hire, coach, and grow engineers, giving clear feedback and creating real growth paths for the team. Partner with product, design, data, and business stakeholders to set priorities and translate ambiguous business needs into a clear roadmap. Define how the team works: engineering practices, AI‑native development workflows, code review culture, and delivery cadence. Lead collaboration across distributed engineering teams, including partners in India. About You You're an engineer first and a leader by choice, not by escape from the code. You've shipped real systems, you still love building, and you've discovered that growing a team multiplies your impact more than any individual contribution. You're serious about AI, both in the product and in how the team works, and you want to lead a team that sets the example for AI‑native engineering. You're comfortable in an early‑stage environment where requirements evolve and priorities shift, and you bring clarity to the team rather than pass ambiguity down. Minimum Qualifications 8+ years of professional software development experience, including 2+ years leading engineers as a manager or tech lead. Strong hands‑on experience building production software in languages such as C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, or TypeScript. Experience designing and operating full‑stack systems across frontend, backend, APIs, and data integrations on cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Track record of hiring, coaching, and growing engineers. Experience owning technical strategy or architecture for a product or platform. Demonstrated ability to work with product and business stakeholders to set priorities and deliver outcomes. Preferred Qualifications Hands‑on experience building with agentic AI frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar), LLM APIs, or Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool integrations. Experience with LLM application patterns such as retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), agent evaluation harnesses, guardrails, or production monitoring of AI behavior. Experience leading a team through AI‑native ways of working, such as AI coding agents, AI‑assisted reviews, or multi‑agent workflows. Experience building or leading a team in a greenfield or newly formed product environment. Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD, automated testing, and production operations. What You’ll Get Our team members fuel our strategy, innovation and growth, so we ensure the health and well-being of not just you, but your family, too! We go above and beyond to give you the support you need on an individual level and offer all sorts of ways to help you live your best life. We are proud to offer eligible team members perks and health benefits that will help you have peace of mind. Simply put: We’ve got your back. Check out our full list of Benefits and Perks. About Us Rocket is a Detroit‑based company made up of businesses that provide simple, fast and trusted digital solutions for complex transactions. The name comes from our flagship business, now known as Rocket Mortgage®, which was founded in 1985. Today, we’re a publicly traded company involved in many different industries, including mortgages, fintech, real estate and more. We’re insistently different in how we look at the world and are committed to an inclusive workplace where every voice is heard. This job description is an outline of the primary responsibilities of this position and may be modified at the discretion of the company at any time. Decisions related to employment are not based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by state or federal law. The company provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with applicable state and federal laws. Applicants requiring reasonable accommodations in completing the application and/or participating in the application process should contact a member of the Human Resources team, at View email address on click.appcast.io. The compensation information below is provided in compliance with all applicable job posting disclosure requirements. The compensation for this position is $123,500.00-$276,000.00. The position may also be eligible for an annual bonus, incentives, and other employment‑related benefits including, but not limited to, medical, dental, and vision benefits, 401K retirement plan, and paid‑time off. More information regarding these benefits and others can be found here . The information regarding compensation and other benefits included in this paragraph is the company’s current, good faith estimate at the time of posting. [Compensation and benefits are subject to modification from time to time as the Company, in its sole and exclusive discretion, deems appropriate.] The Company may determine during its future reviews of the proposed compensation and benefits provided for this position, that the compensation and benefits for such position should be reduced. In no event will the Company reduce the compensation for the position to a level below the applicable jurisdictional minimum wage rate for the position. Los Angeles County and San Francisco Candidates only: qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered per the Fair Chance Ordinance and the Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring. #J-18808-Ljbffr Rocket