VP R&D

Description We’re a fast-growing AI Personalization startup working with leading brands in Israel and the US, backed by a16z and top Silicon Valley VCs. Our platform helps eCommerce brands uncover conversion leaks, run AI-suggested experiments, and deliver personalized, optimized experiences in real time. We’re looking for a VP R&D to join the founding team and help shape the product, architecture, and engineering culture from an early stage. This is a deeply hands-on role . We are looking for someone who is highly motivated by technology, still loves building, and wants to stay close to the code, architecture, product, and technical decisions. At the same time, this role is intended to grow into a broader R&D leadership position as the company scales. We’re looking for someone with a proven management track record, ideally someone who has previously been promoted into engineering leadership and managed development teams — preferably at least at group manager level or equivalent. The right person combines strong technical depth, product intuition, high ownership, and real leadership ability. What You’ll Do Design, build, and ship core product features end-to-end Build agents, tools, skills, harnesses, and scalable agentic workflows Make architectural decisions across frontend, backend, data, and infrastructure Work closely with the founders on product direction and technical strategy Build scalable, reliable systems that operate in high-traffic production environments Develop systems for real-time personalization, experimentation, and optimization Balance fast iteration with robustness, performance, and long-term maintainability Lead by example through hands-on execution and technical excellence Help define engineering practices, culture, hiring standards, and team structure Take increasing leadership ownership as the R&D team grows Requirements Strong hands-on engineer with experience across the stack Proven experience managing engineering teams Previous promotion into engineering leadership is a strong signal Preferably managed at group manager level or equivalent Strong passion for technology and building products hands-on 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent depth Experience building complex production systems Experience with AI agents, agentic systems, or AI-powered products Experience working with large-scale data, event streams, analytics, or high-volume datasets Strong understanding of browser runtime behavior, JavaScript execution, DOM, performance, security, and edge cases Solid fundamentals in system design, APIs, data modeling, infrastructure, and performance Comfortable operating in ambiguity and making high-impact technical decisions Strong ownership mindset — cares deeply about outcomes, not just implementation Tech Stack We don’t expect expertise in everything, but you should be comfortable working across much of the following: Backend: Node.js, JavaScript / TypeScript, python Frontend: React, JavaScript / TypeScript, Next.js Cloud & Infra: GCP Data: BigQuery, PostgreSQL, Redis Messaging / Streaming: Google Pub/Sub Agents framework : AI SDK, LangGraph Bonus Experience with AI/ML-powered products Background in experimentation, personalization, analytics, or growth platforms Previous early-stage startup or founding team experience Experience owning and operating production systems in customer-facing environments Experience hiring, mentoring, and scaling strong engineering teams Why Join Founding-level impact and equity Direct influence on product, architecture, and technical direction Opportunity to build and lead the R&D function from the ground up Work on hard, real-world problems at the intersection of AI, data, and UX Build technology that runs on leading D2C and eCommerce brands Work closely with an experienced founding team