Head of Engineering

About Playlab

Playlab is a tech non-profit dedicated to helping educators and students become critical consumers and creators of AI.

We believe that an open-source, community-driven approach is key to harnessing the potential of AI in education. We equip communities with AI tools and hands-on professional development that empowers educators & students to build custom AI apps for their unique context. Over 60,000 educators have published apps on Playlab – and the impact is growing every day.

At Playlab, we believe that AI is a new design material - one that should be shaped by many to bring their ideas about learning to life. If you're passionate about building creative, equitable futures for students and teachers, we hope you'll join us.

The Role

Playlab seeks a Head of Engineering to lead and grow our platform, infrastructure, and product engineering team. You'll be the accelerator — the person who makes a strong team significantly better by helping engineers do their best work, grow their craft, and ship systems that matter.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll need real technical depth in infrastructure and systems design — not because you'll be writing most of the code, but because that credibility is what lets you unblock engineers, guide architectural decisions, and coach effectively. Your primary focus is the team itself: running it well, growing each engineer, and building the culture and processes that let us move fast on hard problems.

You'll collaborate closely with the Head of ML, partner with product and design, and report to the CTO. You'll also help us weave AI throughout our engineering workflows — we build AI tools for educators, and we should be among the best in the world at using AI to build software. Playlab is not just US-focused — we have active deployments around the world, and much of our work is headed toward the public domain, from safety models for education to research infrastructure to self-hosted deployments.

Examples of the work

• Run the engineering team day-to-day — 1:1s, career development conversations that actually change how people work, and building each engineer's capacity over time

• Support weekly tactical coordination across projects — helping the team see what's immediately ahead, where things stand, and how the group flexibly moves together toward multiple goals at once

• Partner with the CTO on technical strategy, architecture decisions, and the engineering roadmap

• Collaborate with the Head of ML to align platform and ML engineering efforts across shared infrastructure and product goals

• Coach engineers through pairing, code reviews, and system design discussions — not just manage performance, but grow high performers into leaders

• Diagnose what each engineer needs — whether that's more focus, more delegation, more technical depth, or something else entirely — and tailor your support accordingly

• Introduce and refine AI-assisted engineering practices across the team's workflows

• Shape engineering culture and processes for a growing remote-first team — what's working, what's slowing us down, what's next

• Help level up the leadership team of the company — point out where changes can be made that accelerate the mission, not just where engineering can improve

• Work cross-functionally with product, design, research, and education teams so engineering decisions stay grounded in real user needs

• Help double the engineering team from ~10 to 20 this year — hiring, onboarding, and building the structures that let a larger team stay fast and coherent

Expectations

• Create the conditions where engineers do their best work — clear priorities, fast feedback, space to think

• Be hands-on enough with infrastructure and systems design to guide architectural decisions and unblock the team when it matters

• Stay close to our users and bring that context into engineering priorities — we're in schools every week, and that proximity should shape what we build and how

• Balance team process with the speed and experimentation a startup nonprofit requires — enough structure to be reliable, enough flexibility to be creative

• Take security and privacy seriously and ensure the team builds it into their work, especially as we scale globally and handle sensitive education data

• Help set and support the roadmap alongside product and engineering leadership

• Be a thought partner to the CTO, Head of Responsible AI, Head of Security & Privacy, Head of Design, and the broader leadership team — not just on engineering, but on how we operate as an organization

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, with 5+ of those managing or leading engineering teams through periods of rapid change

• Strong technical background in infrastructure and systems design — you've architected, built, and operated production systems at scale, not just worked on features within them

• A track record of developing engineers — people you've managed have grown meaningfully in their skills and careers — and of building and fostering diverse teams intentionally

• Product-minded — you naturally think about what educators and students need, not just what's technically interesting. You understand that our mission is about empowering both educators and students as agents, not building tools that treat either as passive consumers

• Proficient in Python or TypeScript (ideally both)

• Low ego, collaborative leadership style — you lead by making others better, not by being the smartest person in the room

• Thrive in high-agency, high-collaboration cultures where you're expected to figure things out, not wait for direction

• Great communication that makes working remote-first work

Bonus Points For...

• Experience integrating AI tools and practices into engineering workflows

• Experience in education or building in edtech

• Experience at mission-driven or nonprofit organizations

• Experience with international deployments and multi-region infrastructure

• Experience with open source or public-domain engineering work

• Familiarity with our stack: Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform, Typescript (Remix/React, Node), Python, Postgres, Neo4J, Vector Databases, Airflow

Why Join Us?

• Build the engineering team behind AI in education: You won't just manage engineers — you'll double a team and shape how it builds technology that's changing how 60,000+ educators across the globe use AI with their students. Much of what we build is headed toward the public domain.

• Real closeness to users: We're in schools every week — deep-dive 1:1s, group experimentation sessions, strategic planning with entire school districts. Engineering decisions here are grounded in real classrooms, not abstract personas.

• Impact over growth: We're a nonprofit focused on transformation, responsibility, and enabling both educators and students to drive the future of education with AI — as agents, not passive consumers. We're not optimizing for the lowest common denominator.

• Mission-aligned team: Join a small, passionate group committed to equity, creativity, and joyful learning.

• Flexible work: Enjoy a remote-first environment with autonomy and a strong culture of collaboration.

• Competitive pay & benefits: Includes salary, healthcare, retirement, generous time off, and opportunities for professional growth.