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Director of Engineering

Lead engineering teams to build AI-driven solutions for Governance, Risk, and Compliance at a rapidly growing company.

Location
Palo Alto, CA, United States
Compensation
Not disclosed
Level
director
Type
full time

Posted by employer 14 hours ago

First seen on Joblaze 10 hours ago

Last verified on the company career page 10 hours ago

Apply at Zania → Save job Scanned from zania.ai

What you'll build

  • Run engineering execution across multiple teams
  • Hire, onboard, and develop senior engineers
  • Guide the architecture of LLM orchestration
  • Establish standards for code review and testing
  • Partner with security and GRC leads

Must have

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience
  • 4+ years managing engineers
  • 2+ years leading managers or multiple teams
  • Hands-on experience shipping AI/ML systems
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills

Nice to have

  • Background in security, infrastructure, GRC, or enterprise SaaS
  • Experience as a founder or early engineering leader
  • Experience meeting enterprise security requirements
  • A network of strong engineers in the Bay Area

Role intensity

40% coding

AI in the day-to-day

We are building agentic AI for Governance, Risk, and Compliance to automate complex workflows.

Requirements

Experience
10+ years
Education
Bachelor's degree

Not disclosed in this posting: compensation, work arrangement, visa sponsorship.

Benefits

Flexible PTO Equity/Stock Options Health Insurance Relocation Assistance

Joblaze summary

In the role of Director of Engineering at Zania, the individual will oversee the development of AI-driven agents that streamline Governance, Risk, and Compliance tasks for major enterprises. This position requires a strong technical background in AI and machine learning, along with experience in managing and scaling engineering teams. Ideal candidates will have a proven track record in high-growth environments and a focus on delivering accurate, reliable software solutions. Zania's rapid growth and commitment to innovation make this a pivotal role in shaping the future of enterprise GRC.

Joblaze insights

  • Listed today — first seen on Joblaze October 13, 2026. Last confirmed on Zania's careers page October 13, 2026.
  • AI/ML appears in 19.7% of 493 comparable director management roles in United States; GRC appears in 0.4% of 493 comparable director management roles in United States.

Quick facts

How much experience is required?
At least 10 years of relevant experience for this Director of Engineering role.
What's the tech stack?
Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: AI/ML, Agentic systems, GRC, LLM.
What seniority level is this role?
Zania targets director candidates for this position.
Is this full-time or contract?
Full-time for this Director of Engineering role at Zania.

From the original posting

  • Dream Customers: Our customers are the most notable enterprises in the world, including FAANG, Big 4 firms, and a portfolio of top customers.

  • Tier 1 Backing: Funded by a leading Tier 1 venture capital fund. Series A led by NEA, with Anthropic and Menlo Ventures. $18M raised to build a generational company.

  • Competitive Compensation & Equity.

The Role

As Director of Engineering, you will lead the teams building the agents that do real GRC work for the world's most demanding enterprises. This is a hands-on technical leadership role: you will run day-to-day engineering execution, grow and develop engineers and managers, and stay close enough to the code to make the hard architectural calls.

Our agents review evidence, answer security questionnaires, assess vendors, and map controls across frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIST, and customers rely on them to be correct and explainable. You will make sure we ship fast without compromising the accuracy, security, and reliability that enterprise GRC demands. You will partner closely with the Head of Engineering, the founders, product, and our GRC experts.

What You'll Do

  • Own delivery: Run engineering execution across multiple teams, with weekly ship cycles, clear ownership, and a culture where deploying daily is normal.

  • Build and lead the team: Hire, onboard, and develop senior engineers and first-line managers as we scale. Be personally involved in hiring and keep the bar high.

  • Ship production-grade agents: Guide the architecture of our LLM orchestration, retrieval, evaluation, and agentic workflow systems so they are accurate, explainable, and ready for enterprise scale.

  • Raise quality and reliability: Establish practical standards for code review, testing, LLM evaluations, observability, on-call, and incident response.

  • Enterprise readiness: Partner with security and GRC leads to meet the security, privacy, and deployment requirements of Fortune 500 customers, and join technical conversations with customers when needed.

  • Connect engineering to the field: Work with product and our GRC experts to turn customer feedback and agent failure patterns into prioritized engineering work.

Representative Projects

  • Stand up an evaluation framework that measures agent accuracy against practitioner-reviewed answers across real customer assessments, and use it to gate every release.

  • Scale the team by hiring 6–8 engineers and a first-line manager in two quarters without lowering the bar.

  • Lead the architecture for a single-tenant or VPC deployment option required by a Fortune 500 customer, from design to go-live.

What You Have

  • Builder first, leader second: You are a strong engineer who can read a PR, spot an architectural mistake, and fix it yourself.

  • AI-native experience: You have shipped LLM, agentic, or ML systems to production and understand evaluation, context management, and the difference between a demo and a production system.

  • Scaling experience: You have grown engineering teams through a Series A/B and developed engineers into leaders.

  • Shipping velocity: You measure engineering health by what's in production and know how to remove process that slows teams down.

  • Correctness mindset: You have built in a domain where getting it right matters, such as security, compliance, fintech, or health.

Minimum Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years managing engineers and 2+ years leading managers or multiple teams.

  • Hands-on experience shipping AI/ML, LLM, or agentic systems to production for enterprise customers.

  • Demonstrated experience hiring and scaling engineering teams at a high-growth, product-led company.

  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to represent engineering with customers and executives.

Nice to Have

  • Background in security, infrastructure, GRC, or enterprise SaaS.

  • Experience as a founder or early engineering leader (employee #1–20).

  • Experience meeting enterprise security requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP) for your own platform.

  • A network of strong engineers in the Bay Area.

Compensation & Benefits

  • Competitive salary + significant equity

  • Flexible PTO

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance

  • Meals and snacks in the office

  • Relocation and immigration support

Standard company text repeated across Zania's postings is omitted here.

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