Senior Engineering Manager, Enterprise AI Product

<p><strong>Why Thunderbird?</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Thunderbird is one of the world’s most trusted open-source email applications, empowering more than 20 million people globally. At MZLA, the team behind Thunderbird, we build privacy-respecting communication and productivity tools that help people manage their digital lives while staying in control of their data.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We are open source by design. Our products are developed transparently and in collaboration with a global community of contributors, and that same spirit shapes how we work: collaboratively, inclusively, and with a shared commitment to putting users first.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We are a small but growing company of 60+ people distributed across seven countries. As Thunderbird evolves beyond a single desktop application, we are expanding across desktop, mobile, paid services, and new product experiences that help people and organizations work more effectively without giving up control to big tech ecosystems.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Our revenue model combines user donations, which help keep Thunderbird’s apps freely available, with paid services that cover the costs of hosted offerings while supporting long-term sustainability and continued innovation.</span></p> <p><strong>A note about MZLA and Mozilla: </strong>MZLA Technologies Corporation is the nonprofit-owned company behind Thunderbird and part of the Mozilla family. MZLA is separate from Mozilla Corporation and has its own compensation programs, benefits, and employment policies.</p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To learn more, visit </span><a href="http://www.thunderbird.net"><span style="font-weight: 400;">www.thunderbird.net and www.thunderbolt.io.</span></a></p> <p><strong>The opportunity</strong></p> <p><strong>Thunderbolt</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;"> is an open-source, cross-platform AI product initiative from the team behind Thunderbird. It is being </span><strong>built around a clear principle: people and organizations should be able to use AI while staying in control of their data,</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;"> infrastructure, model choices, and long-term options. Thunderbolt is designed to support flexible deployment models, integrations with AI tools and workflows, and use cases across desktop, web, and mobile.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We are looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to </span><strong>lead engineering execution, people management, and operating practices for Thunderbolt as it moves from R&amp;D incubation into a more mature product and enterprise development phase</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;">. This role will help the team define what production-ready means at this stage: stronger release discipline, clearer ownership, higher user-facing product quality, stronger engineering practices, and a more scalable operating model.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is a </span><strong>hands-on technical management role</strong><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for a seasoned engineering leader who has helped early-stage products become reliable, production-ready, and enterprise-ready. You will manage and grow a small senior engineering team, <strong>stay close to code quality and technical execution</strong>, and partner closely with product and technical leadership to turn an open-source, privacy-respecting AI product into something organizations can deploy with confidence.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">We are looking for someone who has seen this stage before: a promising early product, a small senior team, real enterprise interest, incomplete process, and the need to move quickly without creating fragile systems or one-off customer work.</span></p> <p><strong>What you’ll do&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lead engineering execution by clarifying priorities, ownership, timelines, risks, dependencies, and quality expectations.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Manage engineers and contractors, including coaching, feedback, prioritization, performance support, and team development.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Stay close to the codebase by contributing code, reviewing technical work, evaluating tradeoffs, and helping the team maintain momentum and quality.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Partner with technical and product leadership to turn product direction, AI strategy, user experience goals, and technical priorities into coordinated engineering plans.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Establish planning, review, release, and follow-through practices that improve predictability and reduce bottlenecks.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Maintain high standards for code quality, testing, documentation, reliability, security awareness, maintainability, and release readiness.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Build strong product and architectural context across AI-enabled workflows, integrations, local-first or customer-controlled architectures, and release requirements.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Partner across product, design, enterprise-facing teams, and technical leadership to balance speed, user experience, privacy, quality, enterprise readiness, and long-term sustainability.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Lead hiring, onboarding, and resource planning as the Thunderbolt engineering team grows.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Help Thunderbolt scale from an incubation-stage product into a reliable, enterprise-ready open-source AI product.</span></li> </ul> <p><strong>What you bring&nbsp;</strong></p> <ul> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">15+ years of professional software development experience, including significant experience in senior engineering leadership or complex product delivery roles.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">5+ years of experience managing technical teams, including senior engineers or senior individual contributors.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">A track record of leading a team that shipped polished, top-tier products held to a genuine standard of craft.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Strong ability to translate ambiguous product and technical direction into clear plans, ownership models, and delivery momentum.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Technical fluency with AI-enabled products, including the ability to evaluate tradeoffs across areas such as LLM applications, RAG workflows, agents, enterprise search, automation, on-device AI, or AI evaluation.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Demonstrated experience delivering complex applications across multiple platforms, such as desktop, web, and mobile, using technologies such as Tauri, Electron, React Native, or comparable frameworks.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Experience with enterprise software, regulated environments, or similarly complex technical products, including security, privacy, compliance readiness, administration, integrations, and customer-controlled deployment models.</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Practical experience with local-first, offline-capable, self-hosted, hybrid, on-premise, air-gapped, or other customer-controlled product architectures, including tradeoffs related to dat