Engineering Manager, Trust & Safety

Vapi
San Francisco, CA
Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Best suited to engineering leaders with a focus on people management and enterprise system design working in trust and safety, fraud detection, or telephony compliance domains.

Best fit for

  • Engineering leaders who excel in team coaching and shaping team workflows
    — “People leadership is the priority: expect roughly 60–70% people management”
  • Candidates with experience in enterprise billing and fraud systems
    — “You’ll lead a team of four engineers across billing, fraud, and outbound telephony”
  • Individuals who have previously led small engineering teams through complex technical challenges
    — “Experience hiring and building a small engineering team is a plus”

Things to consider

  • The role involves significant on-call and incident response responsibilities early on
    — “own service reliability, on-call, and incident response”
  • The position requires balancing leadership with technical contributions
    — “20–30% hands-on building, alongside architecture and code review”

How to stand out

  • Highlight prior experience in improving on-call and incident response practices
    — “Experience owning reliable services and improving on-call and incident response practices”
  • Showcase your ability to translate product requirements into engineering plans
    — “You can translate product requirements into technical plans”
  • Emphasize your track record in coaching engineers and setting growth goals
    — “You can assess promotion readiness, handle difficult people situations, motivate engineers”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · HighDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • lead engineering team
  • deliver against roadmap
  • improve service reliability
Typical background
engineering managementbilling systems

Skills & requirements

Required

Engineering ManagementBilling SystemsFraud PreventionOutbound TelephonyTeam Leadership

Preferred

AI ExpertiseTrust And Safety

About the role

Original posting from Vapi via Ashby

Vapi (/ˈVɑːpi/):

  • Voice AI that resolves, not transfers
  • Powering 1 billion calls for companies like Amazon Ring, Intuit, ServiceTitan, and New York Life
  • Trusted by 1 million developers building the future of voice agents
  • Backed by Peak XV, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, M12, Y Combinator, and more with $72M raised
  • Try talking to Vapi now! https://vapi.ai/

Why We’re Hiring This Role:

  • Vapi is scaling fast, and the systems that protect our revenue and customer trust need dedicated engineering leadership. You’ll lead a team of four engineers across billing, fraud, and outbound telephony, with billing, pricing, and packaging making up the largest share of the work.
  • Partner closely with our PM for Enterprise & Governance to set priorities and turn the roadmap into reliable delivery. You’ll strengthen the team’s existing operating rhythm, coach engineers, and own service reliability, on-call, and incident response.
  • People leadership is the priority: expect roughly 60–70% people management and 20–30% hands-on building, alongside architecture and code review. The balance can flex with team needs. You’ll shape how the team works and build systems that scale with Vapi.

What You’ll Do:

  • 30 Days: Learn our billing, fraud, and outbound telephony systems. Meet each engineer and your product partners, understand current commitments, and assess architecture, service ownership, on-call coverage, and team development needs. Align on the highest-priority gaps.
  • 60 Days: Build on existing team routines to strengthen planning and delivery with Product, define service ownership, and strengthen on-call and incident response practices. Guide architecture and code reviews, deliver an initial prioritized improvement, and set clear expectations and growth goals with each engineer.
  • 90 Days: Own engineering delivery against a shared roadmap for billing, pricing, packaging, fraud, and outbound telephony. Use delivery and reliability data to prioritize improvements, build actionable development plans for the team, and identify the hiring and system investments needed to scale.

Who You Are:

  • Demonstrated engineering management experience across coaching, performance, leveling, and career development. You can assess promotion readiness, handle difficult people situations, motivate engineers, and hold a team accountable for results.
  • Experience designing scalable, reliable enterprise systems and leading engineers through complex technical problems. Billing systems experience is a strong plus; AI expertise is not required.
  • Strong hands-on coding, architecture, and system design skills. You bring informed opinions to code review, evaluate tradeoffs, and earn the team’s trust through technical depth.
  • Experience owning reliable services and improving on-call and incident response practices. Experience hiring and building a small engineering team is a plus.
  • Experience partnering with a PM, with clear judgment about Product and Engineering responsibilities. You can translate product requirements into technical plans and work through disagreements constructively.
  • Experience in trust and safety, fraud/risk, voice/telephony, or outbound-call compliance is a plus, as is experience scaling a newly formed team.

How We Work:

  • Build something worthy of love
  • Craft matters. We aim to build products and experiences customers genuinely love, not just tolerate.
  • Commit and follow through
  • We finish what we start and build trust by being people others can count on.
  • Why not today?
  • We value urgency and momentum. The fastest path to customer value usually wins.
  • Seek raw input
  • We go directly to customers, data, and teammates instead of relying on summaries or assumptions.
  • It’s our problem
  • We operate as one team. We share credit, own mistakes together, and support each other when things get hard.
  • Be direct and kind
  • We give feedback clearly, respectfully, and without delay.

Why Vapi:

  • Generational impact: Build the human interface for every business
  • Ownership culture: Many of us are previous founders
  • Kind team: The founders, Jordan and Nikhil, are Canadians
  • Tier-1 Investors: YC, KP seed, Bessemer

What We Offer:

  • Real stake: Annual base salary of $264,000–$297,000, plus equity
  • Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision plans
  • Team love: We love hanging out, and we do quarterly off-sites
  • Flexible time off: take what you need
  • More: catered meals, transportation, equipment, and a $10k annual L&D budget

Source: Vapi careers (Ashby)

Similar roles