Engineering Manager – AI Product Growth at Mural in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Strategic Career Position: Leading the "Compose" team — described as one of Mural's "most important bets" — puts you at the center of an AI-native product initiative at a post-Series C SaaS company. This is a high-visibility role with direct impact on company growth strategy, which is rare for an EM position.
Compensation Context: No salary is listed, which is a yellow flag for transparency. Engineering Manager roles at US-based SaaS companies of Mural's scale (mid-market) typically range from $180,000–$230,000 USD in the US, or £90,000–£120,000 in the UK, and €70,000–€95,000 in Spain. Candidates should benchmark carefully based on location band.
Skills You'll Develop:
- LLM/AI product delivery — evaluation pipelines, quality monitoring, cost management at scale
- Full-stack architecture leadership (Azure OpenAI, React, Node, MongoDB)
- Cross-functional leadership: roadmap co-ownership with Product and Design
- Remote team management and async culture building
Green Flags: Emphasis on psychological safety, sustainable pace, and coaching suggests a thoughtful engineering culture rather than a grind-first environment. The hands-on expectation (code review, architecture) keeps your technical skills sharp — a major advantage for EMs who fear going stale.
Watch For: "Fast-moving" and "experimental loop" language can signal scope creep or shifting priorities — clarify how roadmap stability is maintained during interviews.
About the Team
The Mural Compose team is ambitious and fast-moving. We are passionate builders who love to experiment and iterate. Our project is seeking to leverage the latest technology in AI to acquire new customers and expand our revenue base as broadly as possible. This team is at the front of our product strategy and future growth.
Your Mission
You'll lead the team behind one of Mural's most important bets. In the near term, you'll take our AI native product from early access to a product that customers rely on every day, raising quality, reliability, and speed as more users come on board.
Expect a very hands-on role. You'll review PRs, set the technical standards the team builds to, and stay close to the code and architecture decisions. You'll also keep the team's pace high and sustainable while building a high-performing team in a remote-first way.
What You'll Do
- Lead, hire, and grow a team of full-stack engineers through regular 1:1s, clear expectations, coaching, and performance management.
- Own delivery end to end with a fast, experimental loop: ship early to real users, measure what works, and iterate quickly without losing reliability.
- Partner with Product and Design as co-owners of the Compose roadmap, using customer feedback and usage data to decide what to build, cut, or double down on.
- Raise engineering craft across testing, observability, and AI-assisted development, and model Mural's remote-first, work-in-public culture at a sustainable pace.
What You'll Bring
Required:
- 2+ years managing software engineers directly, with responsibility for hiring, coaching, and performance management.
- 5+ years of prior experience as a software engineer building and operating production applications, with hands-on technical work in the last 3–4 years.
- A solid technical foundation, enough to lead architecture discussions and review code with credibility.
- A bias for experimentation: you make sound calls quickly, learn from data, and change course when the evidence says so.
- A people-first approach: you lead with empathy, listen first, and build the trust and psychological safety that help each person do their best work.
- Excellent communication skills, including explaining technical tradeoffs clearly to product, business, and customer stakeholders.
Nice to Have:
- Experience leading a team that shipped LLM-powered features to production, including evaluation, quality monitoring, and cost management.
- Experience building AI agents, retrieval systems, knowledge graphs, or familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Our Stack: Azure OpenAI, React, Node, MongoDB
Equal Opportunity
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this Engineering Manager role fully remote?
How technical is this Engineering Manager position?
What AI or LLM experience is required?
What is the tech stack for the Compose team?
Is there a salary range listed for this role?
