Director of Engineering

Location

San Francisco, CA

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Hybrid

Department

Engineering

About LILT

AI is changing how the world communicates — and LILT is leading that transformation.

We're on a mission to make the world's information accessible to everyone, regardless of the language they speak. We use cutting-edge AI, machine translation, and human-in-the-loop expertise to translate content faster, more accurately, and more cost-effectively without compromising on brand, voice, or quality.

At LILT, we empower our teammates with leading tools, global collaboration, and growth opportunities to do their best work. Our company virtues—Work together, win together; Find a way or make one; Quicker than they expect; Quality is Job 1—guide everything we do. We are trusted by Intel Corporation, Canva, the United States Department of Defense, the United States Air Force, ASICS, and hundreds of global Enterprises. Backed by Sequoia, Intel Capital, and Redpoint, we’re building a category-defining company in a $50B+ global translation market being redefined by AI.

What you’ll do

As Director, Engineering, you’ll lead one of our software development teams. You will be responsible for supporting the career development of the engineers on your team and you will be building and deploying core backend services and frontend applications that are part of the LILT platform. You’ll work closely with our product management and design organizations to ensure we are building the right software for our customers from the private and public sectors, the translator community, and our services team in a reliable and scalable fashion.

We are looking for candidates who have a strong technical background and a solid product vision and can help guide teams and design organizational structure and processes but aren't afraid of rolling up their sleeves and getting down in the weeds on a technical challenge. You'll need to be open to experimenting, and iterating on processes as the company grows. You'll need to be empathic, supportive, and excited to teach as well as learn.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership:
• Support and execute on the Engineering Vision: Setting the technical direction for the team, through quarterly OKRs, based on the organization’s direction while aligning the team with LILT’s overall goals and business objectives.
• Prioritize Projects & Resources: Determine which projects to pursue and allocate limited resources (people, budget, technology) effectively to support LILT’s overall goals and business objectives.
• Build & Manage High-Performing Teams: Recruit, hire, and develop talented engineers, fostering a healthy, positive, and productive work environment.
• Operational Excellence:
• Innovation & AI Adoption: Constantly evolve our software development processes, driving the thoughtful adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools (e.g., code generation, test automation, QA, observability, developer productivity tooling) to bring a competitive advantage to LILT.
• Ensure Project Delivery: Oversee the execution of engineering projects and ensure projects are completed ahead of schedule, below budget, and meet LILT’s high quality standards.
• Implement & Maintain Engineering Processes: Establish and enforce HIGH engineering best practices, methodologies, and “Raising the Bar” standards across the organization, effectively managing the backlog while adding functionality.
• Manage Risks & Dependencies: Identify and mitigate technical risks while managing dependencies between different projects, teams, and departments.
• Communication & Collaboration:
• Communicate Effectively: Clearly communicate, upward and downward, technical decisions and priorities to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Ensure team members understand the meaning, importance, and timeliness.
• Collaborate with Cross-Functional Teams: Work effectively with other departments (product, design, marketing, sales, customer support, delivery, production, etc.) to ensure alignment and support for engineering initiatives as well as for customer enablement & support.
• Build Strong Relationships:
• Fostering positive relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including public and commercial customers, vendors, and partners.

Experience

• Technical Expertise: A minimum of 10 years of experience in engineering, with 6+ years in a leadership position. Strong understanding of the relevant technical domain and experience working on complex projects.
• Management Experience: Proven track record of successfully leading and mentoring engineering teams globally. Experience managing cross-functional, global teams towards high performance delivery.
• Strategic Vision: Ability to execute technical strategies while ensuring alignment with the business goals. Understanding of market trends, including how AI and automation can be leveraged for competitive advantage.

Skills & Abilities

• Leadership: Exceptional leadership skills, including the ability to motivate, inspire, and empower teams. Strong communication, interpersonal, and conflict resolution skills.
• Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Project Management: Strong project management skills, including the ability to set goals, prioritize tasks, and track progress. Proactive nature to communicate delays, roadblocks, or other issues along with solutions.
• Decision-Making: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. Ability to make sound decisions under pressure and in ambiguous situations. Ability to provide recommendations as well as proactive ideas to mitigate future problems.
• People Management: Ability to build high-performing teams, promote a positive culture, and develop talent. Skilled in coaching, mentoring, and performance management. Able to hold tough performance conversations while inspiring high performance outcomes.
• Technical & AI Acumen: Staying up-to-date with relevant technologies and trends, with the ability to evaluate and integrate AI-powered engineering tools into development workflows safely and effectively.

Education

• A Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field is usually required, Master’s degree preferred.

Our Story

Our founders, Spence and John met at Google working on Google Translate. As researchers at Stanford and Berkeley, they both worked on language technology to make information accessible to everyone. While together at Google, they were amazed to learn that Google Translate wasn’t used for enterprise products and services inside the company.The quality just wasn’t there. So they set out to build something better. LILT was born.

LILT has been a machine learning company since its founding in 2015. At the time, machine translation didn’t meet the quality standard for enterprise translations, so LILT assembled a cutting-edge research team tasked with closing that gap. While meeting customer demand for translation services, LILT has prioritized investments in Large Language Models, human-in-the-loop systems, and now agentic AI.

With AI innovation accelerating and enterprise demand growing, the next phase of LILT’s journey is just beginning.

Our Tech

What sets our platform apart:

• Brand-aware AI that learns your voice, tone, and terminology to ensure every translation is accurate and consistent
• Agentic AI workflows that automate the entire translation process from content ingestion to quality review to publishing
• 100+ native integrations with systems like Adobe Experience Manager, Webflow, Salesforce, GitHub, and Google Drive to simplify content translation
• Human-in-the-loop reviews via our global network of professional linguists, for high-impact content that requires expert review

LILT in the News

• Featured in The Software Report’s Top 100 Software Companies!
• LILT makes it onto the Inc. 5000 List.
• LILT’s continues to be an intellectual powerhouse, holding numerous patents that help power the most efficient and sophisticated AI and language models in the industry.
• Check out all our news on our website.

Information collected and processed as part of your application process, including any job applications you choose to submit, is subject to LILT's Privacy Policy at https://lilt.com/legal/privacy.

At LILT, we are committed to a fair, inclusive, and transparent hiring process. As part of our recruitment efforts, we may use artificial intelligence (AI) and automated tools to assist in the evaluation of applications, including résumé screening, assessment scoring, and interview analysis. These tools are designed to support human decision-making and help us identify qualified candidates efficiently and objectively. All final hiring decisions are made by people. If you have any concerns, require accommodations, or would like to opt-out of the use of AI in our hiring process, please let us know at recruiting@lilt.com.

LILT is an equal opportunity employer. We extend equal opportunity to all individuals without regard to an individual’s race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic characteristics, veteran or marital status, pregnancy, or any other classification protected by applicable local, state or federal laws. We are committed to the principles of fair employment and the elimination of all discriminatory practices.

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