Engineering Leader (US)

ABOUT FREEHAND

Most AI companies are building tools. We're building the worker.

Freehand's AI agents replace the human decision-making and coordination layer that sits above enterprise software — handling the analysis, negotiation, prioritization, and execution that previously required armies of logisticians and supply chain professionals.

Our customers include Apple, Meta, GE, Pfizer, J&J, Schlumberger, Cardinal Health, and Unilever. They chose us because we have a fundamentally different answer to what enterprise software looks like when AI can do the job.

If you want to work on something that matters, with people who will push you to be sharper than you thought you could be, this is the place.

THE ROLE & THE TEAM

You will be Freehand's first engineering leader in the US. You will set the bar, the culture and the charter for every US engineer who joins after you, working as a close partner to our CTO and alongside our engineering team in India. There are two aspects to this role:

- You stand up US engineering — charter, hiring, operating rhythm — and act as the CTO's counterpart on the US side, while staying close enough to the work to make the hard technical calls.

- You own core product areas end to end, build and ship it yourself, and lead a small, high-caliber team around it.

Either way, this is not a management-only seat. You will own core, revenue-driving product that customers pay for, and you will build with AI every day.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Build Freehand's US engineering team from the ground up: hiring, culture and the quality bar

- Own core product areas that customers pay for, from requirements to production

- Ship agentic features to some of the world's largest enterprises

- Partner with the CTO on technical direction, architecture and the engineering charter

- Work directly with customers to understand their problems and turn them into product

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Product & Delivery Ownership

- Own core, revenue-driving product areas end to end: direction with product, delivery, customer escalations and business metrics

- Make fast technical and product decisions with incomplete information, and bring structure to ambiguity

- Measure success in revenue, users, cost and latency — with real numbers

Hands-on Engineering

- Stay close to the code and the system design; go deep on architecture and make the hard technical calls

- Take new products from 0 to 1, then scale them

AI-Native Engineering

- Run an AI-first engineering team that uses coding agents, eval loops and AI in review and testing every day

- Ship agentic features to real users, and hold a clear point of view on what works and what doesn't

Team & Org Building

- Hire and grow exceptional engineers (and, as the team scales, engineering managers)

- Set up the operating system: hiring loops, leveling, planning cadence, on-call, quality bar and delivery rhythm

- Work closely with our India engineering team as one org, with some overlap in IST hours

REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

Core Product Ownership

- You have owned a company's core product, a paid product line, or a customer-facing platform that drives revenue — not internal tooling, developer productivity or infrastructure layers

- You can name the customers and quantify what your work moved: revenue, usage, cost or latency

Career Trajectory

- 8+ years in engineering, with title and scope rising steadily — ideally through promotions within the same company

- Currently a Director, Head of Engineering, Senior EM, or Staff-plus TLM, or a Principal at a top-tier company

- At least one stint at a startup or early-stage team

AI-Native

- You and your team use AI daily in how you build software

- You have shipped AI or agentic features to real users — not a thin AI layer on top of an existing product

Leadership & Building

- Director profile: has grown an engineering org from roughly 5 to 30+ people, including hiring managers, and set up