AI Engineering Manager

About the Role

The AI Engineering Manager leads the team that builds and operates Five9's internal AI solutions - the AI Automation Engineers who build solutions and automations, and the AI Platform Engineers who build and run the platform underneath them. This is a hands-on role: at least 30% of your time is spent building, reviewing, and unblocking work alongside the team, primarily in Claude - Claude Code and the Claude API / agent tooling.

The rest is people leadership - managing performance, mentoring engineers, and guiding growth, while balancing delivery against the teams long-term technical health. You partner closely with the solutions architect on technical design, the program manager on roadmap and prioritization, and the enablement lead on adoption, so what the team builds ships, holds up in production, and reaches the people who need it.

How You Contribute

• Team leadership people management - Lead, mentor, and develop the AI Automation and AI Platform Engineers; manage performance, run regular 1:1s, and guide career growth.
• Hands-on project work (30%+ of your time) - Personally build, review, and ship real project work alongside the team - solutions, automations, and platform tasks - primarily in Claude (Claude Code, the Claude API, and agent / MCP tooling).
• Technical excellence standards - Drive best practices in Claude-based development, code review, and design quality; hold the team - and your own work - to the architects standards.
• Delivery roadmap execution - Partner with the program manager and business stakeholders to plan and sequence delivery; balance short-term commitments against long-term technical health.
• Cross-functional partnership - Work closely with the solutions architect on technical design, and with platform, security, and other engineering teams to keep the teams output integrated and secure.
• Quality, security standards adherence - Ensure everything the team ships - including your own work - meets security, data-classification, and responsible-AI requirements.
• Coaching growth - Support the teams professional growth through coaching, training, and knowledge-sharing; create real opportunities for skill development.
• Troubleshooting unblocking - Get hands-on with complex technical problems - in Claude-driven builds and platform issues alike - and drive them to resolution.
• Continuous currency - Stay current on Claude and the broader AI-augmented engineering landscape so your own craft, and the teams, keep pace.

Skills, Competencies Qualifications - Required

• Bachelors or Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years in software or AI engineering, with 2+ years in a leadership role - including a track record of personally shipping production work, not only overseeing it.
• Demonstrated hands-on proficiency building with Claude - Claude Code and/or the Claude API / agent tooling - in a you-direct / AI-executes / you-verify working style.
• Hands-on cloud-native delivery fundamentals: Git, automated testing, CI / CD, and cloud deployment (Google Cloud preferred).
• Working fluency with the platform layer the team depends on: infrastructure-as-code (Terraform), containers / orchestration, and MLOps / LLMOps basics (model / agent serving, evaluation, versioning).
• Solid understanding of integration patterns, APIs, and data-management practices in cloud-deployed systems.
• Excellent communication skills, a strategic mindset, and the ability to collaborate across technical and business teams in a fast-paced environment.

Skills, Competencies Qualifications - Preferred

• Experience with Google Cloud services and infrastructure-as-code / CI-CD delivery pipelines.
• Experience personally building AI / LLM-powered features, agents, or automations in Claude - not only directing others builds.
• Contact center / CX technology exposure (Five9 or comparable).
• Experience partnering with product, design, or business stakeholders to shape a delivery roadmap.
• Prior experience standing up or scaling an engineering teams practices from an early stage.

Where This Role Sits

• Primary focus: hands-on leadership of the AI engineering / builder team - At least 30% hands-on in the teams own project work - building and unblocking in Claude alongside the AI Automation Engineers and AI Platform Engineers - plus people leadership and delivery execution for both.
• Owns hands-on delivery, team leadership people growth - Combines direct, in-Claude project execution with day-to-day people leadership for the builder team - coaching, performance management, and career growth.
• Reports to the Sr. Director; partners with the program manager - Coordinates roadmap and prioritization with the program manager; reports team outcomes up to the Sr. Director, Enterprise AI.

Key Relationships

Direct reports: the AI Automation Engineer(s) and AI Platform Engineer(s). Reports to: Sr. Director, Enterprise AI. Key partners: the Principal AI Solutions Architect (technical design) the AI Program Manager (roadmap and prioritization) the AI Enablement Learning Lead (adoption) information security and enterprise architecture. At least 30% of this role is hands-on in the teams own Claude-based project work, not purely oversight.