Director of Engineering, AI

Job description

ABOUT DASH0 Join Dash0 and help us define the future of observability. We are OpenTelemetry-native, building a delightful, simple, and AI-centric platform that eliminates vendor lock-in and meaningless toil. Shape a product that developers love—all with transparent pricing and cost-control built in. The Opportunity Dash0's AI product, Agent0, is not a chatbot or a feature add-on. It is the core of where we are heading. As AI writes more code, software reaches production faster and at greater scale, often with less human understanding of what is actually running. To ship at agentic speed, you need to be able to run production at agentic speed. This is what Agent0 does. It scans your telemetry, connects to your codebase, and fixes issues before you even notice them. Then it closes the loop and helps you improve your system. We are looking for a Director of Engineering for our AI team: a rare combination of visionary and doer. You will own the engineering of Agent0, leading a growing team and working in close partnership with Product, VP Engineering, and the rest of the Dash0 team. This is a product engineering role. You are responsible for building and shipping Agent0, not enabling AI across the company. You will lead the team that defines, designs, and delivers the product. We would love you to be hands-on: prototyping ideas, evaluating new models, sparring with staff engineers on architecture, and setting the bar for what great AI engineering looks like in production. At the same time, you are the person who keeps the team focused and ships real value to customers, not just chasing the latest shiny thing. WHAT YOU’LL DO - Co-own the Agent0 roadmap with Product, drive execution with discipline and consistency, and ensure what the team builds is grounded in what customers actually need. - Drive delivery and focus. Pick the right bets, ship them, and keep the team away from the many interesting-but-not-now directions the AI landscape constantly offers. - Hire, mentor, and grow a team of senior software and AI engineers. Manage managers as the team scales. - Set the standard for production-grade AI engineering: evaluation pipelines, context management, testing strategies, and the kind of rigour applied to any mission-critical system. - Stay genuinely current with foundation models, agentic architectures, and the broader AI ecosystem, and translate that knowledge into concrete product decisions and prototypes. - Build proofs of concept yourself, earn credibility with senior ICs by showing rather than telling, and bring the team along on the journey. - Champion AI production excellence internally and represent Dash0's perspective on how AIassisted systems should be built and operated in production. WHAT YOU BRING - A proven track record building agentic AI products in production. You understand the profound difference between an internal chatbot and a productised agent that customers depend on for mission-critical work. - Experience building and managing teams. You have hired at scale, built from the ground up, and led teams of 15 or more engineers to success. - Deep hands-on knowledge of agentic architectures: context management, tool use, eval frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation, and multi-step reasoning pipelines. - A rigorous, systematic approach to AI quality: evals, regression checks, human-in-the-loop review, and production monitoring. - Strong cross-functional communication skills. You can align engineers, product managers, and executives around a shared direction and act as a true peer to Product. - Passion for speed and impact. You thrive in a fast-paced, remote-first startup environment where autonomy is high and value to customers is everything. - The discipline to focus: genuine curiosity about where AI is heading, combined with the judgment to pick one direction and finish it. Nice to Have - Experience with observability, distributed tracing, APM, or the OpenTelemetry ecosystem. - A background as a hands-on ML or AI engineer before moving into engineering leadership. - Familiarity with data pipelines and the role of data quality in delivering high-quality AI experiences. - Experience in a high-growth, venture-backed startup environment. Why Dash0 This is a unique opportunity to help build a generational company. Dash0 is backed by top-tier investors including Balderton Capital, Accel and Cherry Ventures and led by a founding team with decades of experience in observability. We're in the middle of a massive growth phase after our Series B — and we're just getting started. If you're looking for a place where a great product meets great people, where momentum is real and your impact is visible from day one — this is it. What we offer: - Competitive salary & meaningful equity participation — you'll own part of what you're building - Flexible, remote-first work environment with offices in New York, Amsterdam, and Munich - €60/month phone & internet allowance - Location-specific benefits - Collaborative, fast-moving team culture with a builder mindset - Clear path for career growth and development - Direct access to founders and leadership