Engineering Manager, Defense

About the Role

Scale AI is expanding its Global Public Sector organization to help governments tackle major challenges with AI. The team works on three main areas: building tailored AI applications that can serve large citizen populations, creating high-quality training data for national large language models, and providing advisory and upskilling support to broaden AI adoption. As these solutions progress from prototypes into production systems, the company is investing in the infrastructure and talent needed to keep them dependable, secure, and trusted by public-sector partners.

This position is a senior engineering leadership role focused on defense work across the Middle East, with a base in Doha, Qatar. The role combines deep defense-domain understanding with strong full-stack and AI engineering capability to guide delivery for defense and national security customers.

What You Will Do

• Lead, expand, and mentor the regional engineering team while overseeing technical delivery for defense and public-sector programs.
• Develop and improve backend services for advanced AI-powered products, especially around AI agents, evaluation systems, and automation.
• Own full-stack engineering work from architecture and system design through debugging, testing, and production rollout.
• Act as the senior technical point of contact for defense initiatives, ensuring solutions satisfy mission-critical, regulatory, and security expectations.
• Design and implement AI agent architectures and API connections adapted to defense and government operating environments.
• Partner smoothly with internal teams and external clients across defense and government accounts.
• Take responsibility for the complete product lifecycle, from early concept to deployment, while maintaining speed and quality.
• Deliver experiments and MVPs quickly to support customer engagement and validation in defense markets.
• Help shape the values, working style, and operating processes of a growing regional engineering organization.
• Coach and motivate engineers to build a high-performing, mission-oriented team.
• Work with cross-functional stakeholders to define, build, and launch product features and user experiences aligned with defense needs.

What We Are Looking For

• At least 10 years of relevant software engineering experience, with strong depth in backend systems and full-stack development.
• At least 5 years leading engineering teams, with evidence of building strong teams in complex, mission-driven settings.
• Solid understanding of the defense sector, including defense operations, national security priorities, and the related regulatory and security environment.
• Strong hands-on experience with AI and machine learning, particularly AI agents, LLM-based applications, and agentic frameworks.
• Practical experience building and integrating APIs in production, across both cloud and on-premises environments, including AI/ML APIs and third-party defense or government integrations.
• Broad full-stack capability across backend services, APIs, data pipelines, and frontend delivery.
• Demonstrated success in leading and scaling high-performing engineering organizations.
• Ability to identify user engagement patterns and product trends in large-scale applications, preferably in government or defense use cases.
• A history of shipping high-quality products and features in fast-moving, high-stakes environments.
• Skill in converting complex defense business and mission goals into practical, scalable engineering solutions.
• Strong problem-solving ability and comfort working both independently and within an international cross-functional team.
• Experience in the GCC region is preferred; Arabic language ability is an advantage.

Additional Information

Candidates will need to observe a 90-day waiting period before being reconsidered for the same role. This policy is intended to support a fair and thorough review process.

About Scale AI

Scale AI’s mission is to build dependable AI systems for the decisions that matter most. The company provides the data and full-stack technology needed to power leading models and to help enterprises and governments develop, deploy, and govern AI applications that create real-world impact. Its work includes partnerships with organizations such as Meta, Ernst & Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force.

Equal Opportunity and Accommodations

Scale AI is committed to an inclusive workplace and provides equal employment opportunities regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or veteran status. Reasonable accommodations are available for applicants with physical or mental disabilities during the application or hiring process.

The company also states that it collects and uses personal data for professional business purposes, such as managing applications, notifying candidates about relevant opportunities, and complying with applicable laws, while following internal privacy and data protection policies.