EngineeringNot provided by source

Engineering Manager - London

INSTALILY.AI · Not provided by source

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Last seen by MeritLog September 12, 2026Source: GreenhouseSource version: greenhouse-job-board-v1

MeritLog read this listing from INSTALILY.AI's Greenhouse job board and last checked it on September 12, 2026.

Source: the employer's Greenhouse job board. Open the original listing for current details.

Job details

Work model: Not provided by source
Salary: £125,000 – £140,000 per year
Location: London, United Kingdom

Hiring context

How this role compares at INSTALILY.AI

INSTALILY.AI has 18 live roles in MeritLog’s catalog across 7 job families, and 9 of them are in engineering. 15 of those listings publish a pay range, a disclosure rate of 83%.

INSTALILY.AI concentrates this hiring in:

Counted across the job boards MeritLog tracks, at the time this page was served. Pay comparisons use only listings that publish a complete range in the same currency and period.

What the role asks for

What you'd do

Manage, coach, and grow a team of 6–10 engineers across levels: set clear expectations, run effective 1:1s, give honest feedback, and develop careers
Communicate and work closely with the New York based Lead Engineers and VP of Engineering
Own performance management end-to-end: hiring, leveling, ramp, promotions, and the hard conversations when they come
Build a low-ego, high-bar engineering culture that mirrors the broader Instalily team: sharp, curious, customer-obsessed
Be a multiplier: your team should ship more and better because you're there
Own delivery for a meaningful product surface; partner with Product to scope, sequence, and ship
Drive operational excellence: incident response, on-call rotation, code review standards, release engineering
Surface tradeoffs clearly to leadership; protect your team from churn while keeping them focused on what matters
Identify and remove the things slowing your team down, whether that's tooling, process, or people
Partner with Lead Software Engineers on architecture, technical direction, and how we scale the platform
Stay deep enough to review designs, code, and PRs meaningfully, and to make the right call when there isn't an obvious one
Contribute hands-on where the work calls for it: gnarly debugging, critical migrations, key architecture proposals
Champion AI/ML best practices (evals, observability, agent reliability) across your team's work
Be present in customer working sessions; help your team turn enterprise workflows into shipped features
Defend architectural decisions to non-technical executives at our customers
Embed with customer teams alongside your engineers during major rollouts
Own hiring for your team (sourcing, interviewing, closing) and raise the bar with every hire
Help build the interview process and the broader engineering brand at Instalily

What they're asking for

6+ years of total software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping production systemsExperience
2+ years managing engineers directly, including hiring, performance management, and growing people through promotionsExperience
Strong technical foundation: you can review system designs, debug production issues, and have informed opinions on AI/ML system architectureSkill
AI-serious: you've led or contributed to shipping LLM-powered systems (agents, RAG, evaluation infrastructure) in production, and you have opinions on what worksSkill
Comfortable with the player-coach archetype: you don't want to stop being technical, and you know the team trusts you more because of itSkill
Experience hiring engineers in a competitive market: sourcing, screening, closingSkill
Comfortable in front of customers: you can run a working session with enterprise stakeholders and present architecture to non-technical executivesSkill
Strong written and verbal communication: design docs, customer-facing updates, performance feedback, and exec-level summariesSkill
Track record of building strong engineering culture and developing engineers into more senior versions of themselvesSkill
Bachelor's or Master's in CS, engineering, math, physics, or related: demonstrated ability matters more than credentialEducation
Prior experience at an early- or growth-stage startup is a strong plusSkill
Prior experience in a forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or client-embedded org at a B2B company is a strong plusSkill

Parsed by MeritLog from the employer’s own posting. The full description follows below.

Job description

About InstaLILY InstaLILY is an AI products and infrastructure company that puts execution at the frontier of enterprise AI. That work begins with Lily™, the world's first AI Forward Deployed Engineer, which learns how a business works, builds the software it needs, and goes live in days. It does not leave when the work ships; it stays and keeps the software working as the business changes. Lily runs wherever the work happens, in the cloud, on-premise, or at the edge, through InstaLILY's Small Data Center, built with NVIDIA technology. Founded in 2023 by Amit Shah and Sumantro Das, InstaLILY has raised nearly $100 million from Energize Capital, Insight Partners, and Home Depot Ventures. Headquartered in New York, with offices in San Francisco, London, and Toronto, InstaLILY serves leading companies across construction, industrial distribution, logistics, healthcare, and other operationally intensive industries. Learn more at https://instalily.ai/. The Traction Revenue grew 5x over the past year, and Lily has driven over $200M in new annual sales for a single customer. We serve some of the largest operators in our industries, including SRS Distribution (part of The Home Depot family), United Rentals, and Henry Schein, and we work closely with the Google DeepMind and NVIDIA ecosystems. How We Work We work in small teams with real ownership: clear problems, direct access to the customers whose work you're changing, and room to ship. Your code runs in live production systems inside billion-dollar operations, so you see your impact directly. People who do well here want that proximity to the work. We're growing fast, and the people who join now shape what this company becomes. Everything runs on three principles: Customers, Culture, and Code. About the Role As the founding Engineering Manager for the London office, you will also be the sole Lead Engineer in the UK, leading the technical direction and a team of engineers building and shipping the AI agent platform that runs inside our enterprise customers' workflows. We're now building out our London engineering and sales hub, bringing New York AI energy to your city, and it's going to be electric. You'll partner closely with Engineering, Product, and Growth to set direction, deliver on the roadmap, and grow the people on your team. You'll own a meaningful surface of the product, from architecture decisions to release quality to the careers of the engineers building it. This is a player-coach role. We're at the stage where the best managers still read PRs, jump into hard problems, and have opinions about system design. You won't be writing code full-time, but you'll be technically deep enough that your team trusts your judgment on the hard calls. This role is client-facing. You'll be in working sessions with enterprise stakeholders alongside your engineers, running technical discovery, defending architecture, and translating customer needs into a roadmap your team can execute. The best managers here can walk a Fortune 500 VP through a system design in the morning and run a thoughtful 1:1 with a struggling engineer in the afternoon. Responsibilities People • Manage, coach, and grow a team of 6–10 engineers across levels: set clear expectations, run effective 1:1s, give honest feedback, and develop careers • Communicate and work closely with the New York based Lead Engineers and VP of Engineering • Own performance management end-to-end: hiring, leveling, ramp, promotions, and the hard conversations when they come • Build a low-ego, high-bar engineering culture that mirrors the broader Instalily team: sharp, curious, customer-obsessed • Be a multiplier: your team should ship more and better because you're there Delivery • Own delivery for a meaningful product surface; partner with Product to scope, sequence, and ship • Drive operational excellence: incident response, on-call rotation, code review standards, release engineering • Surface tradeoffs clearly to leadership; protect your team from churn while keeping them focused on what matters • Identify and remove the things slowing your team down, whether that's tooling, process, or people Technical • Partner with Lead Software Engineers on architecture, technical direction, and how we scale the platform • Stay deep enough to review designs, code, and PRs meaningfully, and to make the right call when there isn't an obvious one • Contribute hands-on where the work calls for it: gnarly debugging, critical migrations, key architecture proposals • Champion AI/ML best practices (evals, observability, agent reliability) across your team's work Customer • Be present in customer working sessions; help your team turn enterprise workflows into shipped features • Defend architectural decisions to non-technical executives at our customers • Embed with customer teams alongside your engineers during major rollouts Hiring • Own hiring for your team (sourcing, interviewing, closing) and raise the bar with every hire • Help build the interview process and the broader engineering brand at Instalily Requirements • 6+ years of total software engineering experience, with a track record of shipping production systems • 2+ years managing engineers directly, including hiring, performance management, and growing people through promotions • Strong technical foundation: you can review system designs, debug production issues, and have informed opinions on AI/ML system architecture • AI-serious: you've led or contributed to shipping LLM-powered systems (agents, RAG, evaluation infrastructure) in production, and you have opinions on what works • Comfortable with the player-coach archetype: you don't want to stop being technical, and you know the team trusts you more because of it • Experience hiring engineers in a competitive market: sourcing, screening, closing • Comfortable in front of customers: you can run a working session with enterprise stakeholders and present architecture to non-technical executives • Strong written and verbal communication: design docs, customer-facing updates, performance feedback, and exec-level summaries • Track record of building strong engineering culture and developing engineers into more senior versions of themselves • Bachelor's or Master's in CS, engineering, math, physics, or related: demonstrated ability matters more than credential • Prior experience at an early- or growth-stage startup is a strong plus • Prior experience in a forward-deployed, solutions engineering, or client-embedded org at a B2B company is a strong plus What You'll Get • Real scope: You'll own a meaningful surface of an AI platform with live enterprise customers, not a sub-sub-team in a 500-person org • Proven product: Customers are live; this isn't a bet on an unproven thesis • AI-native: In how we build, how we work, and what we sell • Stage: Early enough to shape how the entire engineering org grows • Customer access: Real seats at the table with enterprise customers; you'll learn how the largest companies in the world actually buy and deploy software • Global: Based in London with offices in New York and SF • Culture: Sharp, low-ego team that keeps raising the bar • Growth: The learning curve is steep, and you'll have direct exposure to executive leadership Compensation and Benefits • Salary Range: £125,000–£140,000 per year, commensurate with experience • Equity: Stock options awards, and refreshers for top performers • Benefits: Private medical, dental, and vision; pension contribution; in-office lunch reimbursement; wellbeing stipend; generous parental leave; PTO and UK bank holidays, and more! Quality Over Quantity To ensure a focused, high-quality hiring experience, we kindly ask candidates to limit their applications to 3 open requisitions at any given time. Applying strategically to roles that best align with your skills and career goals gives you the highest chance of standing out. Have you interviewed with us in the past 12 months? We encourage you to reach out directly to your previous interviewer rather than submitting a new application. InstaLILY is committed to providing an inclusive and barrier-free recruitment process. If you require an accommodation, please let us know, and we will work with you to meet your needs.

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