Software Engineering Manager

Hasbro is a company committed to entertaining and connecting generations of fans through storytelling and play. They are seeking a Software Engineering Manager to help build a new technical foundation and team within their AI Studio, focusing on architecting systems and delivering impactful technology for character interactions.

Responsibilities:

• Architect, build, and ship features for our AI-powered character platform - including LLM service integrations, REST APIs, and the tooling that lets internal and external partners configure and deliver character experiences
• Establish engineering foundations: CI/CD pipelines, code review standards, observability practices, on-call runbooks, and deployment processes that can hold as the team scales
• Integrate with LLM providers (OpenAI, Google Gemini), voice services (ElevenLabs for TTS, AssemblyAI for STT), and real-time delivery infrastructure (LiveKit) to power live character interactions
• Recruit, onboard, and build a team of engineers organized around dedicated product areas as the portfolio expands
• Partner with the Principal AI Engineer and product leadership to shape technical strategy, make build-versus-partner decisions, and represent engineering direction across business and creative stakeholders
• Measure outcomes, identify gaps, and continuously improve both delivery practices and team structure based on what you learn

Requirements:

• 3+ years of hands-on software engineering experience shipping production web applications, with 1-2+ years in a tech lead or engineering management role
• Production experience on AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, RDS, S3, and ECS) and proficiency in Node.js and/or Python
• Direct experience integrating LLM APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, etc.) in a production context. Understanding how these systems behave at scale is essential, not a bonus
• A track record of building and operating REST APIs consumed by external teams or partners, with attention to versioning, access control, and reliability
• Experience establishing or improving CI/CD pipelines, deployment practices, and observability tooling (Datadog or equivalent) in a cloud environment
• Strong communication skills - the ability to represent engineering decisions clearly for product, business, and creative stakeholders who may not share the same technical context
• Comfort leading in spaces where the structure is still forming, priorities shift quickly, and the right answer requires asking good questions
• Experience managing and mentoring engineers through growth or transition, with genuine interest in developing people alongside the product
• Experience with real-time communication systems (WebRTC, WebSockets, etc.)
• Familiarity with voice AI services, including text-to-speech (TTS) and/or speech-to-text (STT)
• Exposure to prompt engineering, RAG architectures, or evaluation frameworks for LLM-powered systems
• Background in entertainment, gaming, consumer products, or IP-driven development