Software Engineering Lead, Agentic AI

Location: Somerville, MA

Department: Engineering

This role is located in Somerville, MA - We are a hybrid work environment and are in the office 3+ days/per week.

Tulip, the leader in AI-native frontline operations, is helping companies around the world equip their workforce with composable, connected apps, leading to higher quality work, improved efficiency, and end-to-end traceability across operations. Tulip’s cloud-native, no-code platform, powered by embedded AI, is driving the digital transformation of industrial environments through composable, human-centric solutions that go beyond disrupting the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) category.

A spinoff out of MIT, Tulip is headquartered in Somerville, MA, with offices in Germany, Hungary, Singapore, Israel and Japan. Tulip has been recognized as a World Economic Forum Global Innovator, a 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast award winner, one of Energage’s Top Workplaces USA, and one of Built In Boston’s “Best Places to Work” and “Best Midsize Places to Work.”

About the Team: 

The team is responsible for a new agent-native canvas based authoring and administration experience that maps customer production systems — its apps, data, automations, and the context around them — an effort that will redefine how customers compose, deploy, and operate apps on our platform. The team also handles the asset import/export experience across the product, enterprise governance features, and integration with Tulip Library.

About You

You bring high levels of technical acumen and people management skills, years of building and delivering SaaS products, and you’re energized by the chance to build at the edge of what AI models can do. You have strong opinions about agent architectures, context management, and building scalable systems, and you’re passionate about mentoring engineers and helping them grow. You’re a collaborative, motivated self-starter who leads from the front, brings your authentic self to work, and wants to help shape how this team operates as a reference point for AI-driven development across the broader engineering org. You have strong product-engineering instincts — you can prototype quickly, prune scope, and decide what to ship versus what to throw away.

What skills do I need?

• 7+ years experience in software engineering, with experience building and scaling large SaaS products and complex distributed systems
• 3+ years of people management experience leading a software development team, with hands-on technical leadership, architecting solutions, and staying close to the code
• Experience building and scaling AI systems in production, including, agent orchestration and context management, retrieval pipelines and vector stores, tool invocation and MCPs
• Experience designing and running evaluations for agentic systems — defining success criteria, building task suites, and measuring reliability across multi-step tool use
• Expertise in contemporary tech stacks including React, Node.js, MongoDB, and Postgres, with experience deploying in multi-cloud and multi-tenant environments
• Active use of AI tooling in your own practice, with a point of view on how it changes the way teams build
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent working experience

Key Responsibilities

• Own the technical architecture and delivery of Tulip’s new agent-native app-building product.
• Hire, mentor, and grow a team of 3-5 engineers capable of operating with high autonomy and quality from day one.
• Establish engineering standards: testing, observability, and AI-driven development practices for the team.
• Partner with Infrastructure and other Engineering teams to evolve Tulip’s API surface and runtime so agents have what they need without compromising the existing platform.
• Collaborate deeply with product, design, and customer-facing teams as a product threaded team, with shared ownership of outcomes.
• Cultivate an AI-first development culture and continuously raise the bar on velocity and quality.

Key Collaborators

• Product Management & Design
• Engineering Leadership
• Infrastructure & QA
• Tulip Customers and Customer Success 

Working At Tulip

We know even great candidates experience imposter syndrome. Even if you don’t match every requirement, applying gives you the opportunity to be considered.

We're building a strong, diverse team that values hard work, families, and personal well-being. Benefits of working with us include:

• Direct impact on product and culture
• Company equity
• Competitive benefits package including Health, Dental, Vision, Short-term Disability, Long-term Disability, Life Insurance, AD&D Insurance, Flexible Spending Account (FSA), Commuter Benefits, Parental Leave, and 401(K)
• Flexible work schedule and unlimited vacation policy
• Learning & Development program 
• Virtual and in-office global company events and happy hours
• Fitness subsidies
• An inclusive, dog-friendly office with diverse and inspiring colleagues

We are an equal opportunity employer. At Tulip, we celebrate all. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Help us build an inclusive community that will transform frontline operations.

The compensation information displayed on each job posting reflects the range for new hire pay rates for the position across all US locations. Within the range posted, actual compensation will be determined depending on multiple factors including job-related knowledge & skills, experience, business needs, geographical location, market compensation data, and internal equity. Expected compensation ranges for this role may change over time. The salary range for this position is $160,000 - $220,000 per year.