Senior Engineering Manager

About Nirvana

Nirvana is on a mission to harness the power of data to revolutionize commercial insurance and enable a safer world. We are bringing much-needed innovation into the legacy, trillion-dollar commercial insurance industry. We have developed cutting-edge predictive models that use real-time IoT data from billions of connected devices, allowing us to better understand and price risk.

Our AI-driven platform fundamentally changes the way an insurance company operates with personalized risk scoring, faster underwriting, modernized claims, and proactive, data-driven insights to help customers prevent accidents.

We've already proven the scale—reaching well over $100 million in premiums and more than doubling year over year. Our data moat is growing exponentially with more than 20 billion miles of telematics data, leading to more predictive models and new insights into how we can better understand and reduce risk.

With $170+ million raised, including an industry-leading Series C round in January 2025, we're only accelerating our growth, with strong support from top-tier VCs including Lightspeed, General Catalyst, and Valor. Nirvana's leadership team has previously helped scale multi-billion-dollar companies from scratch, including Samsara, Rubrik, and Flexport, and includes industry veterans from Hiscox, The Hartford, and RLI.

The Opportunity

We're building the next generation of insurance technology: agentic systems powered by reasoning models that can auto-resolve claims and transform underwriting. Imagine a minor car claim getting automatically resolved by an AI claims adjuster and payment posted instantly  – that's what we're building, using advanced techniques in reinforcement learning and post-training optimization to bring 10X improvements in customer experience and operational efficiency.

About the Role

As Senior Engineering Manager for AI & Core Infrastructure, you'll lead teams building the foundation for our AI-powered insurance platform. You'll spearhead our efforts in:

• AI Infrastructure:

  • Build and scale our ML platform supporting large language models, reasoning engines, and agentic systems

  • Design infrastructure for reinforcement learning pipelines and model fine-tuning workflows

  • Create robust evaluation frameworks for generative AI systems in insurance contexts

  • Enable rapid experimentation and deployment of AI models in production

• Core Infrastructure:

  • Architect and build the cloud fabric that powers our production environments

  • Design secure-by-default cloud infrastructure with zero-trust principles

  • Create exceptional developer experiences for CI/CD and staging environments

  • Implement comprehensive security across our cloud, application, and AI layers

  • Establish automated compliance frameworks and infrastructure-as-code standards

  • Design scalable observability solutions for our distributed systems

You'll collaborate closely with our Data Science and business teams to translate our vast data assets into competitive advantages that directly impact our growth trajectory.

About You

You are a strategic thinker who can architect, design, and lead the implementation of innovative AI solutions that drive business growth. Comfortable with ambiguity, you tackle complex technical challenges with precision, employing data and analytics to guide design decisions.

Your ability to delve deeply into technical details while maintaining a clear vision of the broader system architecture inspires engineering teams. With a proven track record in delivering 0-1 projects, you excel at leading engineering efforts and fostering collaboration.

You have a keen eye for talent and strong hiring capabilities, able to attract and retain top engineers in a competitive market. Your excellent organizational skills allow you to manage multiple high-priority projects simultaneously while maintaining focus on team development and strategic outcomes.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in system architecture and software development

• 3+ years managing engineering teams

• Deep expertise in designing highly scalable, fault-tolerant, and distributed systems

• Strong background in AI/ML infrastructure and modern AI tooling (LLMs, vector databases, inference optimization)

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and cloud-native technologies

• Proficiency in Go, Java, or other statically typed languages

Preferred Skills

• Experience with generative AI, LLMs, and reasoning systems

• Experience with AI model optimization, serving, and observability

• Knowledge of secure cloud architecture patterns and multi-region deployments

• Familiarity with Kubernetes and modern GitOps workflows

Benefits

• Competitive compensation & meaningful equity

• Health insurance for you and your family

• Monthly wellness stipend

• Hybrid work culture

• Flexible vacation policy

• Autonomy to make a tangible impact in a fast-growing startup