---
title: 'Manager, AI Engineering at SandboxAQ'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/manager-ai-engineering-sandboxaq-united-kingdom-cr1ct7hnawxz'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-04'
---

# Manager, AI Engineering at SandboxAQ

- **Company:** SandboxAQ
- **Location:** United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-10-21
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-04
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sandboxaq/52a8f36d-2784-4041-a538-b37a340f2efc

## Job description

## About SandboxAQ

SandboxAQ is a high-growth company delivering AI solutions that address some of the world's greatest challenges. The company’s Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) power advances in life sciences, financial services, navigation, cybersecurity, and other sectors. We are a global team that is tech-focused and includes experts in AI, chemistry, cybersecurity, physics, mathematics, medicine, engineering, and other specialties. The company emerged from Alphabet Inc. as an independent, growth capital-backed company in 2022, funded by leading investors and supported by a braintrust of industry leaders. At SandboxAQ, we’ve cultivated an environment that encourages creativity, collaboration, and impact. By investing deeply in our people, we’re building a thriving, global workforce poised to tackle the world's epic challenges. Join us to advance your career in pursuit of an inspiring mission, in a community of like-minded people who value entrepreneurialism, ownership, and transformative impact.

The Opportunity The SandboxAQ AI team is looking for a hands-on Manager, AI Engineering to help us build the future of agentic collaboration, trust and ROI. Our goal is to make agents work well on their own, in teams, and with humans. This includes the following aspects:

- Security: Discovery of agents, evaluation, red teaming, monitoring, guardrails, etc.
- Quality: Measuring ROI of agents and suggesting improvements
- Collaboration: Bringing humans and agents together into one place with shared context

A successful candidate thrives at the intersection of AI and software engineering. You deeply understand how models and agents work, how they can fail, how they can be protected and improved. You have hands-on experience with agents in production, know what works and what doesn’t, know the latest trends and you’re opinionated about the future. You know what you don’t know and enjoy learning to close those gaps. You’ll turn your insights and innovation into real world features baked into our platform - shipping code to production.

This is a hands-on leadership role where you’ll break things, fix them and then harden them for good while also leading a small team of engineers. At the same time, you’ll have freedom to explore, collaborate, publish, and deploy, shaping the field of agentic collaboration and trust from all angles. You will help set technical direction, raise the quality bar, mentor team members, and ensure that the team moves quickly from research insight to real-world product impact.

We’re looking for somebody with the curiosity of a researcher, the rigor of an engineer, and the creativity of a hacker. You will be part of a diverse team consisting of ML experts, security experts, mathematicians, and software engineers, each playing a key role in efficient and effective enablement of the cutting-edge technologies being developed at SandboxAQ.

## Key Responsibilities

- Lead and grow a small, highly technical team while remaining deeply involved in hands-on engineering and research.
- Set technical direction, break down ambiguous problems, establish practical plans for fast, high-quality execution, and build a culture of ownership, low-ego collaboration, thoughtful experimentation, and high standards.
- Create new agentic capabilities, including frameworks for monitoring, guardrailing, and evaluating agents, while staying current on the latest agentic developments and identifying new opportunities.
- Perform classical ML tasks, including exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, and model fine-tuning, and rapidly iterate on prototypes and features based on feedback and evolving product needs.
- Work closely with Product and Research to translate AI research into applicable features and software engineering projects.
- Contribute production-ready code and technical designs, working across engineering to deliver scalable, reliable software.

Essential Skills & Experience

- BSc in Computer Science or related field with exposure to AI/ML.
- Deep expertise in AI/ML, software engineering, or AI security.
- Strong programming skills in Python, and relevant ML and/or agentic frameworks.
- Demonstrated ability to work cross-functionally and collaboratively with a high degree of end-to-end ownership, delivering real world outcomes.
- Ability to pick up other programming languages and technologies as required to ship scalable and reliable software.

Highly Desired Skills & Experience

- PhD in Computer Science or related field with focus on AI/ML or similar.
- Hands-on experience with at least one of the following: agent orchestration, agent harnesses, agent teams, jailbreaking / prompt injection, red teaming, data poisoning or evasion attacks, secure model deployment or sandboxing, detection and monitoring for AI misuse.
- Experience contributing to open source projects.
- Experience in a fast-paced startup environment.
- Experience in cybersecurity is a plus, but not essential.

Why Join Us? We offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package designed to support your health, financial well-being, and life outside of work.

- Career Defining Work: Your work will directly accelerate the discovery of better drugs and better materials, advance human health, and enable safer and more sustainable technologies by helping customers put AI Simulation capabilities into real world use.
- Compensation: Competitive base salary, performance-based incentives or bonuses (where applicable), and equity participation.
- Benefits: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents with generous employer premium contributions, retirement savings with company matching, paid parental leave, and inclusive family-building benefits.
- Work-Life Balance: Fully remote, Flexible paid time off, company-wide seasonal breaks, and support for flexible work arrangements that enable sustainable performance.
- Learning and Growth: Opportunities for continuous learning and growth through on-the-job development, cross-functional collaboration, and access to internal learning and development programs.

SandboxAQ Welcomes All We are committed to fostering a culture of belonging and respect, where diverse perspectives are actively sought and valued. Our multidisciplinary environment provides ample opportunity for continuous growth - working alongside humble, empowered, and ambitious colleagues ready to tackle epic challenges. Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or Veteran status. Accommodations: We provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities in job application procedures for open roles. If you need such an accommodation, please let a member of our Recruiting team know. Read: [Guidance for candidates on using AI Tools in interviews](https://www.sandboxaq.com/ai-in-interviews)

## About SandboxAQ

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: SandboxAQ develops Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) that combine AI and quantum techniques to solve real-world challenges in drug discovery, materials, navigation, cybersecurity, and other high-impact sectors.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Late Stage; raised $1.6B total, including Series E, venture rounds, and grants)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021 (spun out from Alphabet in 2022)
- **Founders**: Jack Hidary (CEO); Eric Schmidt serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors

## Core Business
- **Primary Industries**: AI/Quantum software, life sciences (drug discovery), cybersecurity, financial services, navigation/defense, materials science
- **Target Customers**: B2B, serving large enterprises and government organizations in pharma, energy, defense, finance, and logistics
- **Mission**: Revolutionize industries with groundbreaking solutions at the intersection of AI and quantum technology

## Products & Services
- **AQBioSim**: AI simulation platform for accelerating molecular design and reducing failure rates in drug discovery (SaaS)
- **LQMs for Cybersecurity**: Cryptography management and quantum-safe security solutions (e.g., post-quantum cryptography, key management)
- **AI Navigation & Sensing**: Precise positioning and navigation systems resistant to jamming/spoofing, leveraging AI and quantum sensors (SaaS + hardware integration)
- **Materials & Chemistry Modeling**: LQMs that predict atomic-level properties to unlock new compounds for chemicals and materials (SaaS)
- **Financial Services LQMs**: Models for risk analysis, portfolio optimization, and fraud detection (SaaS)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed; total funding reached $1.6 billion
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding: $1.6B (13 rounds); Annual Revenue (estimated): $9M (via disclosed financial data)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: T. Rowe Price, Eric Schmidt, Breyer Capital, Guggenheim Partners, Marc Benioff, Thomas Tull, Paladin Capital Group, Nvidia (backed via grant/award)
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount: ~296 employees (+10.6% YoY)
  - Operating in 16 countries (US, Canada, UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, etc.)
  - Acquired Good Chemistry (Jan 2024) and Cryptosense (Sep 2022) to expand capabilities
  - Recent funding: $95M venture round (July 2025), additional private equity round (Feb 2026)
  - US government awarded $500M (Nvidia-backed) for finding new outcomes (likely defense/pharma contract)
  - Recognized with multiple industry awards (Fierce Innovator in Life Sciences 2025, Wash100 Award, etc.)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Quantitative AI (LQMs)**: Models that understand the physical world (molecules, materials, navigation) – distinct from purely data-driven LLMs
- **Alphabet Spinout Heritage**: Foundational technology and talent from Google’s parent company
- **Multidisciplinary Team**: Physicists, chemists, cryptographers, AI researchers – rare combination
- **Strong Government & Enterprise Ties**: Direct contracts with US defense and pharma, plus deep investor network
- **Integrated Portfolio**: One platform covering simulation, cybersecurity, and sensing – creating cross-selling opportunities

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale LQM Applications**: Expand from drug discovery into climate, energy, and defense
- **Deepen Government Partnerships**: Capitalize on $500M US award and develop mission-critical navigation/security systems
- **Build Ecosystem**: Open APIs and partnerships with cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Databricks) to embed LQMs into existing workflows
- **Talent Acquisition**: Aggressively hiring ML engineers, computational chemists, and research scientists to maintain technical lead

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Emphasizes inclusion, service leadership, and fearlessness. Described as “the most humble player in the AQ industry” with a growth mindset.
- **Remote/Hybrid Policy**: Flexible work environment; home office stipend and connectivity stipend provided; regular offsites for collaboration.
- **Benefits**: Best-in-class medical, dental, vision; 100% paid maternity/paternity leave; 401k with company match; wellness stipend; learning & development programs; flexible time off including winter break and volunteering days.
- **Engineering Culture**: Hands-on work at the frontier of AI and quantum; cross-disciplinary teams (physics, chemistry, neuroscience, cryptography); opportunity to publish research and attend conferences.
- **Growth Opportunities**: Residency program for early-career scientists; stock options; clear career progression in a fast-growing late-stage startup.

## Sources
1. [sandboxaq.com](https://www.sandboxaq.com/)
2. [sandboxaq.com/company/about-us](https://www.sandboxaq.com/company/about-us)
3. [sandboxaq.com/careers](https://www.sandboxaq.com/careers)
4. [linkedin.com/company/sandboxaq](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sandboxaq)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/sandboxaq](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sandboxaq)

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