Engineering Manager, AI

About the Role

This team helps automate audit readiness work while keeping customers in control. This is a rare opportunity to lead a zero-to-one build in one of the fastest-growing areas of our business, transforming Vanta into an AI-first platform.

The team's mission is to make AI a core differentiator of Vanta by enabling and accelerating product innovation, and creating reliable, trustworthy, and high-quality customer experiences. The team is currently building out our Vanta Agent product, focused on downmarket and startup customers initially, with plans to scale the product to all customer segments. Core projects include agentic evidence collection, reducing manual work while ensuring the customer remains the final approver in all decisions.

In this role, you'll manage a team that's scaling rapidly—currently 7 engineers with plans to grow to scale further throughout the year. You'll work closely with Vanta's AI platform team, product, and GRC subject matter experts to ship AI features that deliver magical customer experiences.

What you’ll do as an Engineering Manager at Vanta:

• Build and scale a high-performing team, hiring strategically to fill skill gaps as the team grows
• Coach, mentor, and create an environment where your team can do their best work and deliver for the business
• Set direction and guide technical strategy for AI agent and downmarket products, ensuring long-term value aligned with Vanta's business priorities
• Partner closely with product, design, and AI platform teams to ship customer-facing AI features that automate audit work while maintaining human-in-the-loop controls
• Champion best practices for applied AI, including prompt engineering, RAG, agentic frameworks, and quality evaluation
• Navigate rapid change and ambiguity with adaptability, iterating quickly on roadmaps as the team's charter and direction evolve

How to be successful in this role:

• 2+ years of experience managing technical teams of 4-8+ engineers
• Proven track record as a strong individual contributor before transitioning to management, with hands-on applied AI experience
• Deep knowledge of building LLM-backed products, including experience with prompting, RAG, agent frameworks, and quality hill-climbing
• Experience in fast-paced, startup environments; founder background or YC experience is a strong plus
• Strong adaptability and comfort with ambiguity—you can quickly iterate on roadmaps without too much attachment as priorities evolve
• Excellent collaboration and influencing skills across engineering, product, design, and cross-functional teams
• Familiarity with Vanta's tech stack (TypeScript, React, Node.js) or willingness to ramp quickly
• Open to using AI to amplify their skills and strengthen their work - demonstrating curiosity, a willingness to learn, and sound judgment in applying AI responsibly to improve efficiency and impact.

About Vanta

We started in 2018, in the wake of several high-profile data breaches. Online security was only becoming more important, but we knew firsthand how hard it could be for fast-growing companies to invest the time and manpower it takes to build a solid security foundation. Vanta was inspired by a vision to restore trust in internet businesses by enabling companies to improve and prove their security. From our early days automating security monitoring for compliance standards like SOC 2, HIPAA and ISO 27001 to creating the world's leading Trust Management Platform, our vision remains unchanged.

Now more than ever, making security continuous—not just a point-in-time check— is essential. Thousands of companies rely on Vanta to build, maintain and demonstrate their trust— all in a way that's real-time and transparent.