Engineering Manager, AI Game Engine

ABOUT US Weekend https://www.weekend.com/ is the leading developer of voice AI games for smart TVs. Our games attract millions of users every month, with family favorites like Jeopardy!, Song Quiz, CoComelon: Sing and Play with JJ, and Wheel of Fortune. We believe voice interfaces will become the main way people access entertainment in their living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and cars. We’re building a bundled subscription product similar to Netflix or Spotify for the emerging category of “AI-powered games.” Weekend was founded by Max Child and James Wilsterman in 2024. The founders went through Y Combinator in 2018 and landed a spot on the 2022 YC Top Companies List. We’re a quickly-growing team headquartered in Union Square, San Francisco. ROLE SUMMARY We’re looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to lead our AI Game Engine team. You will lead a high performing team of software and ML engineers building the systems and services needed to deliver best-in-class voice-first AI-native gaming experiences to our players on connected TVs and other gaming surfaces. This is a new team responsible for building and evolving our core voice and model integrations along with other services needed to deliver our game development and runtime platform. This includes speech-to-text and text-to-speech pipelines, LLM game integration, model evaluation and fine tuning, image generation pipelines, and content/prompt management. You will work closely with our Game and Platform teams as well as cross functional partners in Product and Data to drive our AI and game engine strategy. You will identify impactful opportunities, rapidly ship new features, and your products to support current and future players. We’re actively expanding our game titles and platforms and this is an opportunity to play a pivotal role in creating innovative, fun applications in voice-activated gaming across connected devices. This job opportunity offers a hybrid work arrangement, and we are specifically seeking candidates who are comfortable with on-site attendance in our Bay Area office 3 times per week and are either currently residing in or near the Bay Area or willing to relocate for on-site work. WHAT YOU'LL DO AT WEEKEND - Lead and grow a high performing team of engineers, ensuring we build the right things at the right time to support our evolving gaming ecosystem. - We are an AI-first development shop - evangelize and leverage AI productivity and development tools within your team and help drive adoption across the company. - Partner closely with Product and Game teams to define the roadmap, set priorities, deliver delightful and impactful features. - Build and scale systems and services to enable fun, engaging and unique player experiences leveraging STT/TTS, LLMs and other core technologies. - Collaborate with platform and infrastructure teams to identify upstream and downstream dependencies, align delivery schedules, and streamline release processes. - Foster a culture of ownership, continuous learning, and product thinking within the team. - Ensure the technical excellence of the team by providing feedback, promoting best practices, and helping remove roadblocks. WE'RE EXCITED ABOUT YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE - 2+ years managing engineering teams, with a proven record of cultivating productivity and team satisfaction. - Demonstrated ability to build and grow high performing engineering teams - 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, ideally in fast-paced consumer product environments. - Experience successfully building and evolving AI integrations leveraging STT/TTS/LLM and similar models. - Demonstrated cross-functional collaboration, with strong communication skills and a bias toward action. - Experience building and running scalable services and/or software platforms including monitoring, alerting and incident response. BONUS POINTS - Experience and personal interest with gaming, interactive media, and AI-powered consumer applications - Prior wor