Genies is an avatar technology company powering the next era of interactive digital identity through Smart Avatars. With the Avatar Framework and intuitive creation tools, Genies enables developers, talent, and creators to generate and deploy game-ready Smart AI companions. The company’s technology stack supports full customization, AI-generated fashion and props, and seamless integration of user-generated content (UGC). Backed by investors including Bob Iger, Silver Lake, BOND, and NEA, Genies’ mission is to become the visual and interactive layer for the LLM-powered internet.
Genies is seeking a Director, Site and Infrastructure to lead the evolution of Genies’ backend services, full stack systems, and infrastructure powering our developer platform, core mobile experiences, and AI-driven capabilities. The role is responsible for technical strategy, execution, and people leadership across multiple engineering teams. You’ll work closely with leaders across Engineering, Product, Design, and LLM Research to define the long-term platform vision while ensuring we deliver reliable, secure, and high-performing systems today. This is a high-impact role for a leader who thrives at the intersection of architecture, scale, and team development, and who is excited to help shape the technical foundation of an avatar ecosystem.
What You’ll be Doing:
- Technical and Platform Leadership
- Own the Genies AI companion product delivered via web tech which incorporates world spanning IP from our partners in media, sports, fashion, talent and elsewhere.
- Own the complex graph of services which provide the core of our Avatar and all other systems including architecture and design of APIs, heavy compute, full stack systems and infrastructure, that power Genies’ developer platform and products.
- Balance the priorities of technology, product and business across these areas alongside partnered leaders of those areas.
- Define and guide long-term technical strategy for flexibility, extensibility, scalability and reliability across the platform.
- Set standards and best practices for system design, technical ownership, operational management, observability, and quality.
- Partner closely with Security and Site Reliability to ensure high availability, performance, and compliance.
- Team and Organizational Leadership
- Lead backend and full stack engineers, including engineering managers and senior ICs.
- Build, scale, and develop high-performing teams through hiring, mentoring, and career development.
- Establish clear ownership, accountability, and operating rhythms across teams.
Foster a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
- Execution and Delivery
- Deliver products in partnership with Product leadership to define scope, priority, and execution of major initiatives.
- Guide teams in efficiently bringing complex product ideas and platform capabilities from concept through to production, evolution and scale.
- Balance delivery of product features, technical investments and reduction of technical load on teams.
- Infrastructure and Operations
- Oversee cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and production operations.
- Lead efforts around uptime, incident response, postmortems, and system resilience.
- Optimize infrastructure for performance, cost efficiency, and future growth.
Ensure teams are prepared to support increasing scale, traffic, and developer adoption.
- Cross-Functional and Strategic Impact
- Serve as a key technical partner to executive leadership.
- Communicate complex technical tradeoffs, risks, and plans clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Collaborate with research and applied teams supporting AI, ML, and LLM-powered systems for end users.
- Contribute to defining Genies’ long-term technology roadmap and platform vision.
What You Should Have:
- 10+ years of professional engineering experience with a strong background in backend and platform development.
- 4+ years leading engineering teams, including managing managers.
- Experience scaling systems and teams in a high-growth startup or similar environment.
- Track record of owning and operating production systems with meaningful scale and availability requirements.
Technical Background
- Deep experience designing and building APIs, distributed systems, and service-oriented architectures.
- Strong proficiency in one or more backend languages such as Golang, Python, Ruby or Node driven languages such as backend TypeScript.
- Experience with legacy cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP.
- Experience with new gen cloud platforms such as Lambda, Crusoe, TensorWave, Nebius, etc.
- Familiarity with scaled websites, infrastructure, DevOps practices, and production operations.
- Ability to go deep technically when needed, while operating primarily at a strategic and tactical level.
Leadership & Mindset
- Strategic thinker with strong execution instincts.
- Excellent communicator, particularly around goals, risks, and tradeoffs.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and fast-paced environments.
Passionate about building teams, mentoring leaders, and shaping engineering culture.
Bonus:
- Experience supporting developer platforms or ecosystem products.
- Background in consumer-facing or creator-driven platforms.
- Exposure to AI/ML systems, real-time systems, or gaming/3D technologies.
How Genies will support you
- Competitive salary and equity packages
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance
- Unlimited PTO
- Parental leave
- Hybrid work structure (minimum 4 days in office weekly)
- Monthly wellness reimbursement
Genies is a well-funded, fast-growing start-up that values innovation, creativity, and ownership. Our roles and their responsibilities are created with a breadth of scope that introduces each employee to exciting new challenges and opportunities that a growing start-up encounters. The actual base pay is dependent upon a number of factors, including: professional background, training, transferable skills, work experience, education, location, business and product needs, and market demand. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.
Starting Salary Range: $250,000 - $300,000 if annualized
Here's why you'll love working at Genies:
- You’ll lead and mentor a talented, mission-driven team while still shipping impactful code.
- You’ll shape the technical foundation of next-gen avatar systems built for the LLM-powered internet.
- You’ll join a startup with enterprise-level stability and visionary leadership, including seasoned operators and industry pioneers.
