--- title: 'VP of Engineering - Rime.AI at Unusual Ventures' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/vp-of-engineering-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-8k6p2m5f0qrg' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-09' --- # VP of Engineering - Rime.AI at Unusual Ventures - **Company:** Unusual Ventures - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-06-23 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09 - **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/unusual/0e9985b5-8ad7-4ba9-a697-149800e7ec9f ## Job description Rime is a foundation modeling company that builds voice AI for enterprises running customer experiences at scale. Our models are purpose-built for high-volume conversational deployments, engineered for the accuracy, performance, and deployment flexibility that production environments actually demand. We started from a different premise than the rest of the field: build voice AI for human connection, not slop. Before we trained a single model, we built our own corpus: full-duplex, studio-quality conversational speech of normal people, recorded and annotated by linguists. It's why our models are unparalleled in naturalism, and it's why enterprises pick Rime when pilots need to make it to production. ## Role Overview We're hiring Rime's first Technical Program Manager. Engineering is growing and the coordination work — priorities, timelines, IC alignment, external triage — needs an owner. This isn't a process-management role. It's a role for someone who thinks in systems, can read a codebase, and wants to be in the room (and the repo) where technical decisions get made. You'll work directly with engineering leads, founders, and the modeling team to keep Rime moving in the same direction at the same time. ## What You'll Own - Engineering roadmap: tracking initiatives across all teams, ensuring alignment between company objectives and engineering blueprints. Driving the company roadmap while giving engineers liberty to do what they excel at. - Priority triage: fielding requests from customers, sales, marketing, and leadership, and translating them into clear, sequenced tasks so ICs stay focused with aggressive prioritization. - Bottleneck identification: identifying execution blockages, inefficient information channels, unrealistic timelines; and if necessary, do some ad-hoc coding to glue things together. - Cross-functional reconciliation: Be the cross-functional coordinator across engineering roles, build trust across the company by soliciting feedback and proposing concrete action plans. - Tooling hygiene: using and managing project management and issue tracking tools as needed to facilitate work coordination. - Public documentation: you will be owning [docs.rime.ai](http://docs.rime.ai/). - Compliance program: owning the compliance burndown in coordination with infrastructure and engineering. ## What We're Looking For - 2 years or more experience in program or project management, coordinating technical work across multiple engineering workstreams. - Comfort diving into codebases — you can read a PR, understand a system diagram, and ask the questions in the smart way. If necessary, you head in and hack something with the help of LLMs. - Strong written communication and async-first working style. - You know the difference between a roadmap and a time-scoped plan, and when each is appropriate. - Trust engineers’ expertise in their areas, but still hold them accountable without becoming an obstacle. - When something small is blocking progress and you can fix it yourself, you do. ## Nice to Have - Experience building the TPM function from scratch at an early-stage startup. - Familiarity (and excitement!) with ML or voice AI systems. - Experience owning compliance or security programs. - Background in working in SaaS companies with a significant amount of customer-facing roles. ## Why Join Rime - You'll be the connective tissue of a high-output engineering team at a critical growth stage. - Direct access to founders and engineering leads — no layers. - The role expands as you prove what it can be. - Meaningful equity upside. - High ownership, high standards, low bureaucracy. - SF / Bay Area. ## About Unusual Ventures ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: A venture capital firm that provides hands-on operational support and a dedicated engagement model to help technical founders of enterprise AI software startups achieve product-market fit. - **Entity Type**: Private (venture capital fund) - **Headquarters**: Menlo Park, California, United States - **Founded**: 2018 - **Founders**: Jyoti Bansal and John Vrionis ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Venture Capital / Financial Services, with a focus on seed-stage enterprise AI software startups. - **Target customers**: Technical founders of early-stage startups (B2B through founders). - **Mission or purpose statement**: “Raise the bar for what founders should expect from their venture investors” and give technical founders the best odds of finding product-market fit. ## Products & Services - **Unusual Venture Capital**: Seed-stage investment in enterprise AI software startups. - **Unusual Founder Services**: A team of full-time operators embedded with portfolio companies to execute customer discovery, go-to-market strategy, and product-market fit work. - **Unusual Academy**: An immersive program where founders work side by side with Unusual’s founders and expert operators. - **Community & Events**: Quarterly founders events, founder academy, monthly intimate dinners with customer prospects, and go-to-market tools. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not applicable (private fund; not publicly disclosed). - **Key Metric**: 20 employees (as of latest data); 51,647 LinkedIn followers (+16.5% yearly); 10 active job postings (+100% yearly). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: LPs are primarily non-profits (hospitals, foundations, HBCUs). Portfolio companies include Rime (powers nearly 100 million phone calls/month for clients like Mayo Clinic, Dialpad, Upstart, and Asurion). Co-founder Jyoti Bansal is one of only 16 people to build two companies surpassing $100M in revenue (AppDynamics and Harness). - **Growth Signals**: Portfolio companies raise follow-on rounds at valuations “significantly above industry averages.” The firm has seen a 100% increase in job postings year-over-year. ## Competitive Advantages - **Full-time operator model**: Unlike traditional VCs, Unusual embeds dedicated operators who do the work alongside founders, not just advise. - **Concentrated portfolio**: Makes a small number of investments each year, giving each founder full attention. - **Proven founders**: Jyoti Bansal (AppDynamics, Harness) and John Vrionis (30+ billion-dollar outcomes) bring deep first-hand experience. - **The Unusual Method**: A purpose-built framework for product-market fit, refined through thousands of customer conversations. - **LP alignment**: LPs are primarily non-profits, creating a “forces for good” ethos. ## Strategic Focus - Continue investing in seed-stage enterprise AI software startups. - Expand the Unusual Method and Founder Services to increase portfolio success rates. - Build a close-knit, supportive founder community to drive repeatable PMF. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: “Forces for good” – employees work with a mission-driven team committed to founders through the hard phases. 5.0/5.0 employer rating (1 review) with high marks for work-life balance, compensation, and career growth. - **Work environment**: Small team (20 people) with high impact. Offices in Menlo Park (HQ) and San Francisco; team also distributed across the US and Australia. Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated, but the presence of multiple offices suggests flexibility. - **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work alongside top technical founders and industry veterans; direct involvement in the product-market fit process; exposure to a concentrated portfolio of cutting-edge AI startups. - **Career path**: Roles across venture operations, sales, finance, and programs. The firm actively hires for roles that support portfolio companies (e.g., Founding Account Executive, VP of Engineering, Software Engineer) as well as internal functions (e.g., Director of Programs, VP of Sales). ## Sources 1. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/our-story/) 2. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/team/) 3. [unusual.vc](https://www.unusual.vc/founder-services/) 4. [jobs.lever.co/unusual](https://jobs.lever.co/unusual) 5. [linkedin.com/company/unusualventures](https://linkedin.com/company/unusualventures) ## Other roles at Unusual Ventures - [Founding Growth Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-growth-lead-unusual-ventures-new-york-kmsxm8vt2jf2) — New York, NY - [Account Executive - GovSignals](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-govsignals-unusual-ventures-washington-v5qmvvh121zc) — Washington, DC - [Operating Partner - Founder Services & Platform](https://feeny.ai/job/operating-partner-founder-services-platform-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-b7ffknpmaxhw) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, Growth - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-growth-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-s5p7jbey688a) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, ML Serving - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ml-serving-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-ffg0j75y8aq4) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer - Rime Ai](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-rime-ai-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-ckey6rat0q69) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Account Executive - Roboto AI](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-account-executive-roboto-ai-unusual-ventures-seattle-1z2tsdepcdgx) — Seattle, WA - [Chief Executive Officer - Stealth Startup](https://feeny.ai/job/chief-executive-officer-stealth-startup-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-qcbz6pgkm8jx) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Engineer - Miravoice](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-engineer-miravoice-unusual-ventures-san-francisco-y6b563tm643v) — San Francisco, CA