Manager, Software Engineering - AI Assistant

What You'll Do 

The NetDocuments AI Assistant, part of ndMAX, is our flagship legal AI product: secure, DMS native AI that keeps a firm's documents inside NetDocuments while helping legal professionals analyze documents, draft and refine content, and take action through natural language, embedded where they already work, in Word, Outlook, and search. A strong security posture and deep integration with the system of record are central to how the product earns trust with legal customers. 

We are building the next generation of the Assistant's capabilities: intelligent, agentic AI that can take actions on a user's behalf, specialized agents for common legal tasks, and secure integrations, including support for the Model Context Protocol, that let the Assistant work across the tools legal professionals rely on. 

We are seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the AI Assistant engineering team through this next chapter. The work is live. We are shipping to real customers and growing the team, and you will join at a formative moment for the product, when leadership decisions, technical bets, and team building habits compound for years. 

This is one of the most strategically important investments NetDocuments is making, and the category is moving fast. The Engineering Manager who leads this team will help shape what the AI Assistant becomes, and grow the leadership skills and experience that pave the way for future opportunities. 

A few principles shape this work and the candidates we're looking for in this role: 

• Validate, then scale. We ship to customers early, learn fast, and harden as features prove their value. 
• AI forward. We design around what modern models and agents make possible. 
• Customer feedback drives the roadmap. What we build next is shaped by what customers tell us matters most. 
• Security and trust first. We build AI that respects each firm's permissions and keeps sensitive content protected on the system of record. 

In this role, you will: 

Lead and develop a high performing team 

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of approximately 5 to 6 software engineers and software test engineers. 
• Foster a culture of trust, collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement. 
• Partner with recruiting to attract and hire exceptional engineering talent, including engineers with applied AI and machine learning experience. 
• Support career growth through mentorship, feedback, and performance development. 
• Create the conditions for engineers to do their best work, and be the escalation path for blockers the team cannot resolve on its own. 

Drive delivery and execution 

• Partner closely with Product, Design, and platform engineering teams to turn customer needs into scalable software solutions. 
• Help build and execute a roadmap that balances customer facing impact, technical excellence, and long term platform durability. 
• Guide your team through planning, execution, and delivery of the Assistant's agentic AI capabilities while holding a high bar for quality. 
• Lead through ambiguity, sequencing the work, derisking it, and adjusting as we learn from real users and as the AI landscape evolves. 
• Communicate capacity, priorities, and delivery risks proactively as a core member of the engineering, product, and design triad. 

Collaborate cross functionally 

• Coordinate across multiple engineering teams contributing to a shared product vision. A meaningful portion of this role is unlocking work that crosses team boundaries, including bringing the Assistant to customers across NetDocuments products and surfaces. 
• Communicate priorities, risks, and progress clearly to technical and nontechnical stakeholders. 
• Build the partnerships that drive alignment and execution across the organization. 

Provide technical leadership 

• Provide technical guidance and architectural input while empowering engineers to own implementation details. 
• Champion modern engineering practices, including CI/CD, cloud native architectures on AWS, observability, automated testing, and scalable system design. 
• Advocate for highly reliable, maintainable, and secure software, with strong observability and a proactive approach to security. 
• Bring sound judgment to building on large language models and agentic systems, including evaluation, prompt and context design, tool integration, cost and latency management, and safe rollout. 

Shape culture and innovation 

• Foster a growth mindset and a culture of continuous learning. 
• Encourage experimentation, thoughtful problem solving, and learning from incidents. 
• Cultivate transparency, ownership, and customer impact across the team. 
• Support knowledge sharing and technical excellence across teams. 

What You'll Need to Be Successful 

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. 
• 7+ years of software engineering experience. 
• 2+ years leading engineering teams, including both software engineers and software test engineers. 
• Working familiarity with modern AI, including large language models and agentic systems, and sound judgment about applying them in production software. This is table stakes for the role. 
• Experience building and delivering enterprise scale, customer facing software products. 
• Strong understanding of modern software development practices, including cloud platforms, CI/CD, distributed systems, and scalable architectures. 
• Proven ability to lead teams through ambiguity while balancing execution and technical quality. 
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills. 
• Demonstrated success building high performing teams and delivering impactful software. 

What Will Make You Stand Out 

• A track record of shipping AI native or agentic product surfaces at scale, features built around what large language models and agents make possible, not bolted onto an existing product. 
• Depth in the applied AI stack: LLM application development, retrieval augmented generation, evaluation and observability for AI systems, and managing model cost, latency, and quality tradeoffs. 
• Experience leading teams that build platform scale SaaS products, extensibility platforms, or developer and authoring tooling. 
• Experience in legal technology, professional services SaaS, or other regulated enterprise software where data sensitivity and auditability matter. 
• A track record of mentoring engineers and developing future technical leaders. 

What You’ll Love About NetDocuments  

• The People! 
• 90% healthcare premiums company covered  
• HSA company contribution  
• 401K match at 4% with immediate vesting  
• Flexible PTO (typically 3 to 4 weeks a year)  
• 10 paid holidays  
• Monthly contributions for life activities & wellness  
• Access to LinkedIn learning with monthly dedicated time to explore 

Compensation Transparency 

The compensation range for this position is: $180,000 - $200,000

The posted cash compensation for this position includes on target earnings. Some roles may qualify for overtime pay. Individual compensation packages are determined based on various factors specific to each candidate, such as career level, skills, experience, geographic location, qualifications, and other job-related considerations.