Engineering Manager (Applications - AI)

Description

NewsWhip by Sprout Social is looking to hire an Engineering Manager (Applications - AI) to our Engineering team in Ireland. 

Why join NewsWhip’s Engineering team?

NewsWhip by Sprout Social is the leading provider of predictive media intelligence, tracking and predicting engagement with the world’s news stories each day. Our platform is used each day by journalists at hundreds of top tier publications, and communications professionals at all 10 of the top 10 global PR agencies, dozens of international brands, and NGOs, international organisations and not-for-profits.  As a key member of our product delivery team, you'll work closely with Product and UX leaders to shape and execute our AI strategy while managing diverse engineering teams that bring innovative solutions to life. You have a great opportunity to directly input into what we build and how we build it.

What you’ll do

• Grow your cross-functional team of engineers from backend, frontend, data platform, and AI disciplines by example with effective feedback, coaching, and career development

• Proactively identify and communicate emerging AI technology opportunities that align with business goals and customer needs, helping shape the product vision through technical innovation

• Actively contribute to product strategy and roadmap planning, providing technical perspective and feasibility assessment, and partner with Product Management and UX Design to align on strategy, planning and execution for your team 

• Facilitate discovery sessions and technical spikes to validate approaches and identify risks early

• Balance customer needs, technical constraints, and business goals to make informed product decisions

• Drive consistent, high-quality execution by setting clear expectations, regularly tracking progress on deliverables, and proactively addressing challenges. 

• Ensure delivery plans, team structure, and engineering outputs consistently align with business objectives and product goals, maintaining focus on measurable customer and business impact

What you’ll bring

We're seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to lead multi-disciplinary feature teams delivering NewsWhip's ambitious AI roadmap. If you’re passionate about leading teams to solve hard problems that deliver meaningful customer value, while fostering a culture of learning and collaboration, we’d love to talk with you!

The minimum qualifications for this role include:

• 5+ years of experience in building, scaling, and maintaining software systems in a production environment, with expertise in Backend Development, Data Engineering and proven experience in LLM product delivery in production environments. 

• Demonstrated technical expertise in several of the following areas: Large Language Models and their APIs, Vector databases (ChromaDB, Pinecone, Weaviate, etc.), Embedding models and similarity search, RAG architectures, Prompt engineering and management, AI evaluation and testing frameworks, or LLMOps tools and practices

• 2+ years of experience managing and leading high performing engineering teams, with a strong emphasis on delivery, execution, and achieving measurable business outcomes.

• 2+ years of experience delivering engineering projects and initiatives in partnership with Product Management and UX, including ensuring the delivery of a team’s roadmap, prioritizing technical improvements with cross-functional teams, and communicating progress with business stakeholders

Preferred qualifications for this role include:

• Experience with AI frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.)

• Background in media analytics or content intelligence

• Knowledge of semantic search and content retrieval

• Experience with real-time AI systems

• Experience with cloud platforms (GCP preferred)

• Previous startup or high-growth company experience

How you’ll grow

Within 1 month, you’ll plant your roots, including:

• Complete NewsWhip’s new hire training & onboarding program alongside other new NewsWhip and Sprout team members. You’ll gain a broader understanding of our products and how your role fits into the organization.

• Make a plan with your manager to set initial priorities, align on expectations for your role, plant goalposts for your career, and learn the team's current Mission, Goals, and Objectives along with future product roadmaps.

• Begin to understand the capabilities and limitations of our platform, web, and mobile technologies.

• Start to build relationships with the team.

• Start to learn the capabilities and limitations of the social network APIs we integrate with.

• Learn Sprout's management practices and tools.

• Deploy and make changes to our production systems.

• Provide regular technical guidance and feedback through code reviews.

• Establish a clear execution plan by identifying quick wins and aligning with the team on immediate priorities and goals.

• Develop an understanding of team workflows and identify any initial adjustments that could improve delivery efficiency.

Within 3 months, you’ll start hitting your stride by:

• Implement early tracking and accountability measures to monitor team progress on key deliverables and address roadblocks as they arise.

• Set up regular execution reviews with your team to keep projects aligned with the roadmap and identify areas for process improvement.

• Participate in architectural discussions and decisions, asking the right questions to push your team to successful outcomes.

• Analyze trends with bugs and help the team identify where to best focus.

• Help the team shape the technical roadmap for long term success.

• Assume management of the engineers on your team, Identify career growth opportunities and work with them on goals. 

• Start 1:1s with everyone on the team and continue building relationships.

• Help the team improve processes and team rituals.

• Build relationships with our infrastructure, product, and support teams and identify ways your team can be more proactive and effective.

• Successfully complete your first support week rotation.

Within 6 months, you’ll be making a clear impact through:

• Ensure measurable progress on major deliverables, guiding your team to meet key milestones and adapt plans to address any execution challenges.

• Establish team-wide accountability by setting specific, actionable metrics for team performance, leveraging data to support continuous improvement.

• Guide your team through and contribute to the successful launch of a major feature.

• Understand the business goals and help the team balance technical debt, bugs, and product features.

• Start to grow your leaders and ensure they are focused on the right things.

• Lead performance review and career band calibration process for your team.

• Proactively focus your team on the right problems.

Within 12 months, you’ll make this role your own by:

• Refine execution processes by standardizing successful workflows, ensuring consistent, high-quality delivery across projects.

• Champion a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging team members to proactively identify and resolve execution issues to maintain momentum on deliverables.

• Have development plans in place for your team and hold them accountable.

• Get acclimated to the hiring process and contribute to the recruitment and interviewing processes

• Surprise us! Use your unique ideas and abilities to change NewsWhip Engineering in beneficial ways that we haven’t even considered yet.

Of course what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.

Our Benefits Program

We’re proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product and culture. Our benefits program includes:

• Comprehensive Private Health & Dental: 100% premium coverage for you and your eligible dependents through VHI (Health) and DeCare (Dental).

• Pension Scheme: We match your pension contributions 1-to-1 up to 6% of your salary.

• Life & Disability Insurance: 100% paid-for life cover and disability insurance for your peace of mind.

• Generous Paid Time Off: 25 days of leave, plus all public holidays and additional company-wide Rest & Recharge days.

• Paid Parental Leave: We support all growing families with 26 weeks of full pay for birthing parents and 16 weeks of full pay for non-birthing parents. 

• Family & Care Support: Access to subsidized child/eldercare through Care.com.

• Premium Mental Health Support: Full access to Modern Health for you and your dependents, including free coaching, therapy sessions, and digital wellness resources.

• Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA): An annual $700 USD fund to spend on your physical, mental, and financial well-being.

• Work From Home Support: A one-time $550 USD stipend to set up your home office, plus a monthly $50 USD stipend for internet.

• Dublin Office Perks: A €18 daily lunch stipend (via Deliveroo) when you work from our Dublin office.

• Commuter Savings: Access to the Tax Saver Commuter/Cycle to Work scheme for tax savings.

• Charitable Giving: A company match for your donations to eligible organizations.

*This list is for informational purposes only. Benefit offerings are discretionary and subject to change and do not constitute a contract or guarantee of benefits.

Whenever possible, we want to provide team members the flexibility to work in the location that makes the most sense for them. If you prefer an office setting, this role may be based in our Dublin location. If you prefer to work remotely from another location within Ireland, we will accommodate you as best as possible. 

If you are based in another location within EMEA, we aren’t able to hire in your location at this time.

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