---
title: 'Engineering Manager, Platform at Cartesia'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-platform-cartesia-san-francisco-39bxn084hz1v'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-08'
---

# Engineering Manager, Platform at Cartesia

- **Company:** Cartesia
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-31
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-08
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cartesia/eb5ca11e-86c6-4a8b-9c94-95d90a1b0cf0

## Job description

## ABOUT CARTESIA

Our mission is to architect AI that learns from and interacts with the world like humans do.

We're pioneering the model architectures that will make this possible. Our founding team met as PhDs at the Stanford AI Lab, where we invented State Space Models or SSMs, a new primitive for training efficient, large-scale foundation models. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering paired with a design-minded product engineering team to build and ship cutting edge models and experiences.

We're funded by leading investors at Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with Factory, Conviction, A Star, General Catalyst, SV Angel, Databricks and others. We're fortunate to have the support of many amazing advisors, and 90+ angels across many industries, including the world's foremost experts in AI.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

We're hiring an Engineering Manager to lead one of Cartesia's core engineering teams as a hands-on technical and people leader. You'll build and grow a team of 7+ engineers, own its technical direction and execution, and stay close enough to the work to provide meaningful technical leadership when it matters.

## YOUR IMPACT

- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing engineering team through hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.
- Own your team's roadmap, decisions, and outcomes, setting clear priorities and driving a high and predictable shipping cadence.
- Provide technical leadership across architecture, design reviews, complex technical problems, and production incidents.
- Develop a deep understanding of your team's systems and technical tradeoffs so you can challenge assumptions, make sound decisions, and unblock the team.
- Partner closely with Product, Research, and other teams to set direction and deliver against company priorities.
- Ensure the systems your team owns scale ahead of the business while maintaining a high bar for performance, reliability, and engineering quality.

## WHAT YOU BRING

Given the scale and difficulty of problems we work on, we value managers who combine exceptional people leadership with strong technical judgment.

- Experience managing and developing high-performing engineering teams, including coaching, performance management, and career growth.
- Strong technical depth and engineering judgment, with the ability to earn credibility with experienced engineers and engage deeply in architecture and technical decisions.
- A track record of leading teams to deliver complex technical projects in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
- Strong ownership and prioritization skills, with the ability to make difficult tradeoffs and balance near-term execution with longer-term investments.
- Experience building large-scale distributed systems with high demands on performance, reliability, and observability.
- Strong cross-functional leadership and the ability to align stakeholders around technical decisions and priorities.
- [bonus] Experience building or scaling engineering teams through periods of rapid growth or organizational change.
- [bonus] Background in machine learning, AI infrastructure, or generative models.

Note: Cartesia participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information to confirm employment eligibility after hire.

## MORE DETAILS

🏢 In-office policy: We’re an in-person team based out of offices in 🇺🇸 San Francisco, 🇬🇧 London and 🇮🇳 Bangalore. We love being in the office, hanging out together, and learning from each other every day.

🌎 Visa sponsorship: We provide visa sponsorship support and assess each circumstance on a case-by-case basis. However, visa sponsorship is dependent on many factors, including the role you are applying for, and the location you are going to be based, and so we can't always guarantee success. Your Recruiter will work with you to understand your visa sponsorship needs from the first call.

🚢 We ship fast. All of our work is novel and cutting edge, and execution speed is paramount. We have a high bar, and we don’t sacrifice quality or design along the way.

🤝 We support each other. We have an open & inclusive culture that’s focused on giving everyone the resources they need to succeed.

## OUR BENEFITS (US EMPLOYEES ONLY)

💰 Compensation Competitive base salary alongside attractive equity package.

🩺 Health Insurance Fully covered medical insurance along with dental and vision for you and your family.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Parental Leave 9 weeks paternity & 12 weeks maternity leave

🏦 401(k)

🚆 Commuter Allowance A monthly stipend to help you get to and from the office.

🏖️ Flexible PTO Take as much time as you need to recharge your batteries.

🍲 Meals & Snacks Lunch, dinner and plenty of snacks, provided daily.

🦖 Your own personal Yoshi

## OUR COMMITMENT TO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Cartesia is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other legally protected status.

## About Cartesia

## Company Overview

- **One-liner**: Cartesia builds next-generation foundation models using state space models (SSMs) to deliver ubiquitous, interactive, real-time AI that runs wherever you are.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A-II; total funding $191M)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Karan Goel (CEO), Albert Gu (Chief Scientist & Co-founder), Brandon Yang (Co-founder), Arjun Desai (Co-founder)

## Core Business

- **Primary industry/industries**: Artificial Intelligence – foundation models, real-time voice AI, multimodal AI
- **Target customers**: B2B – developers and enterprises building real-time AI applications in healthcare, robotics, gaming, customer service, localization, recruiting, finance, and more.
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Build the next generation of AI: ubiquitous, interactive intelligence that runs wherever you are.”

## Products & Services

- **Sonic**: The world’s fastest generative voice API – a streaming text-to-speech API that supports laughter and emotion, designed for real-time voice agents (SaaS / API).
- **Ink**: Likely a multimodal generation product (text-to-image or visual) – part of Cartesia’s broader SSM platform.
- **Agents**: A framework or tool for building real-time AI agents using Cartesia’s foundation models.
- **Core foundation models**: State-of-the-art SSM-based models for text, audio, video, images, and time-series data (research-backed platform).

## Market Standing

- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $191M  
  - Seed Round (Dec 2024): $27M  
  - Venture Round (Nov 2025): $100M  
  - Series A (Mar 2025): $64M (latest round)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, NVIDIA, A* Capital, and more.
- **Growth Signals**:  
  - 88 employees with +6.5% monthly headcount growth  
  - 34 active job postings (+17.2% monthly, +9.7% quarterly)  
  - Website traffic up +73.2% year-over-year (380k monthly visits)  
  - Team hails from Stanford, CMU, Meta, Scale AI, Cruise, and other top AI labs

## Competitive Advantages

- **Pioneering SSM Architecture**: The founding team invented State Space Models (SSMs) at Stanford AI Lab – a subquadratic alternative to transformers that enables higher quality and far more efficient inference for real-time, multimodal AI.
- **Speed & Efficiency**: Sonic (voice API) is marketed as the world’s fastest generative voice API, critical for latency-sensitive applications.
- **World-class Backing**: Supported by top-tier VCs (Index, Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins) and NVIDIA, providing both capital and ecosystem access.
- **Research‑to‑Product Pipeline**: Direct lineage from academic breakthroughs to production-grade APIs, giving them a deep technical moat.

## Strategic Focus

- **Real‑time, Ubiquitous AI**: Expand from voice to broader multimodal capabilities, powering interactive AI that runs on edge and cloud.
- **Vertical Expansion**: Target high‑value use cases in customer service, healthcare, gaming, robotics, and localization.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Aggressively hiring across research, engineering, product, and go‑to‑market roles (34 current openings).
- **Open‑source & Community**: Maintain a developer‑friendly stance with a Discord community and free trial of Sonic.

## Why Work Here

- **Cutting‑edge AI Research**: Work alongside the original inventors of SSMs and contribute to foundational AI architecture.
- **Fast‑growing Startup**: 88 employees with rapid headcount growth and significant funding – offers ownership and impact.
- **Values‑driven Culture**: “Get the fundamentals right,” “Build to solve problems,” “Aim beyond what’s possible,” “Be honest,” “Have fun with it.”
- **Remote‑flexible**: Presence across 5 countries (US, UK, India, South Korea, Switzerland) suggests a distributed team with flexible working arrangements.
- **Engineering‑heavy**: 39% of staff in technical roles, 8% in research – strong emphasis on technical excellence.
- **Notable Perks**: Not explicitly listed, but a high‑caliber team (Stanford, Meta, Scale AI) and top investor backing indicate competitive compensation and a vibrant startup environment.

## Sources

1. [cartesia.ai](https://cartesia.ai/company/)
2. [LinkedIn – Cartesia](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cartesia-ai)
3. [CB Insights – Cartesia](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/cartesia)
4. [Lightspeed Venture Partners – Cartesia](https://lsvp.com/company/cartesia/)
5. [Jobs.ashbyhq.com – Cartesia Careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/cartesia)

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