VP of Engineering

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm focused on building and investing in scalable technology-led companies. The VP of Engineering will lead and scale a high-performing team to develop cutting-edge AI-enabled technology, ensuring the delivery of secure and resilient systems in demanding environments.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and grow a high-performing engineering team of 10+ senior software engineers, with a strong focus on mentorship, technical excellence, and healthy delivery practices
• Set technical vision and execution strategy across our full stack—frontend, backend services, data platforms, and integrations with AI/optimization systems
• Drive experimentation and thoughtful innovation, encouraging teams to explore unconventional approaches while maintaining reliability, security, and healthy delivery practices
• Partner closely with optimization researchers and analytics teams to translate complex algorithms and models into scalable, reliable production systems
• Own engineering delivery: roadmaps, execution plans, engineering standards, and architectural decisions that balance speed, quality, and long-term maintainability
• Oversee complex, multi-layered systems end-to-end, making high impact technical decisions that account for architecture, data, algorithms and operations together rather than in isolation
• Drive engineering excellence establishing high standards for code quality, system design, testing and reliability
• Champion engineering at the leadership level, ensuring the team has the tools, clarity, and focus to do their best work
• Partner with Security and Compliance to ensure engineering systems, processes and environments support CUI handling, NIST SP 800-171, CMMC, DFARS and customer security requirements

Requirements:

• Proven experience leading and scaling high performing engineering teams in a high-growth or startup environment
• Strong technical background across modern web architectures, APIs, distributed systems, and cloud platforms
• Experience bringing complex AI, optimization, or data-intensive systems into production environments
• Track record of setting technical direction while also getting things shipped
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous problem spaces and translate abstract business or mission goals into concrete technical strategies and execution plans
• Clear, compelling communication skills—able to translate complex technical concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences
• Comfort operating in a fast-moving, evolving environment with real ownership and influence
• Experience operating in DoD, IC, federal or similarly regulated environments
• Working knowledge of CUI handling, NIST SP 800-171, CMMC, DFARS252.204.7012
• Experience with secure SDLC/DevSecOps, vulnerability management, logging, hardening, and auditability
• This role requires US Citizenship and all work to be performed within the United States
• Experience integrating production systems with Python-based analytics or AI workflows
• Familiarity with modern DevOps, observability, and reliability practices
• Familiarity with real-time systems, asynchronous processing, and data-intensive applications
• Experience supporting live exercises, demonstrations, operational test events, or time-sensitive deployments
• Experience working closely with mathematical optimization models, including translating real-world problems into production systems in partnership with optimization researchers
• Experience with Algebraic Modeling Languages and Solvers (e.g., Pyomo, GAMS, AMPL, CPLEX, Gurobi)
• Experience with RMF, ATO, or cATO processes
• Experience with ITAR/EAR or export-controlled environments