Our mission is to reinvent the way people learn, starting with language.
Learning a language can change a life by opening doors to new cultures, careers, and communities. Two billion people around the world are actively trying to learn a language, but the best way to learn (one-on-one tutoring) is hard to access at scale and hasn’t been meaningfully improved in decades. Speak is building a human-level, AI-powered tutor in your pocket: a conversation-first experience that lets learners actually speak, get instant feedback, and progress through carefully designed lessons. The result is a complete path from beginner to confident speaker across multiple languages.
Speak first launched in South Korea in 2019, where Speak has now become the number one language learning app, and we now serve learners across many markets and 15+ languages. Speak is one of the world’s leading AI companies, with over $150m raised in venture investment from OpenAI, Accel, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, and more, with a distributed team across San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, and Ljubljana.
About This Role
We're looking for experienced Engineering Managers to lead critical engineering teams at Speak - the world's leading AI-powered language learning app. This is an extraordinary moment to join us: we're in the middle of a fundamental agentic shift in software development, and are embracing the change.
You'll lead engineers working on some of the most compelling problems in consumer AI, from building realtime voice AI systems to designing LLM orchestration platforms that power millions of personalized learning conversations to scaling inference infrastructure across global markets. The technical surface area is deep, spanning custom ML models, voice agent platforms, LLM tooling, and production infrastructure.
As an EM at Speak, you’ll also be a key driver of our agentic engineering transformation, helping your team evolve from "using AI to code faster" to designing the systems, environments, and feedback loops that enable agents to do increasingly autonomous, high-quality work. We believe this shift is creating a massive and widening gap between teams that fully embrace it and those that don't, and we're building for the former.
As part of this, we’re looking for EMs that are excited to use coding agents to get close to the metal again, stay deeply in the details of your team's work, and lead by example.
What you'll be doing
Leading and managing a team of engineers while setting strong output and productivity expectations
Contributing technically, both through coaching and leadership as well as directly contributing: e.g. shipping smaller projects, bugfixes, and improving the agent environment using coding agents
Driving your team's agentic engineering transformation: constantly asking what's still being done manually, identifying slowdowns and roadblocks, and actively closing the gap
Setting the pace and driving velocity while articulating and setting a high quality bar
Collaborating closely and effectively with partner functions like Product/Design/many more to execute effectively in the AI era
Proactively pushing for changes to shared infrastructure, tooling, and systems that help the broader engineering org become more agentic
Building and maintaining a healthy, high-performing team culture
What we're looking for
8+ years of IC software engineering experience on fast-paced, high performance teams
4+ years of direct team management experience
Strong backend, systems, platform/infra, or performance background
Deeply technical and building faster than ever with coding agents
High agency but low ego
Strong conviction that 10x engineering output is possible with agentic tools and practices
Proven ability to drive velocity, hold a high quality bar, and give direct performance feedback
Excited about working in-person in San Francisco at least 3-4 days per week
Nice to haves
Background in AI-native products and systems
Track record of driving org-wide developer productivity or tooling initiatives
Join a fantastic, tight-knit team at the right time: we're growing very quickly, we've most recently raised our Series C from some of the top investors in the valley, and we've achieved product-market fit in our initial markets. You'd join at a magical time when a single person could significantly change the course of the company.
Do your life's work with people you’ll love working with: we care strongly about our craft and want every person at Speak to feel like they're growing every day. We believe in the idea that working with people you both enjoy and have respect for makes everything better. We hire thoughtfully and only work with people we admire deeply.
Global in nature: We're live in over 40 countries and launching in a number of new markets soon. We have dedicated offices in San Francisco, Ljubljana, Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei, and you’ll have the opportunity to talk to users in each of these regions on a regular basis as well as travel.
Impact people's lives in a major way: Learning a language is one of the single most life-changing skills one can learn, and right now 99% of people never achieve their goal because the process is broken. We’re helping millions of people achieve their goals and improve their lives.
Speak does not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.