Head of Software
Mantari · Torrance, CA
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Jul 22, 2026
Torrance, CA
Jul 23, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior technical leadership role responsible for designing and building the full-stack software platform at an AI-driven weather intelligence startup. The work spans edge sensor compute, data ingestion and assimilation pipelines, large-scale model training and inference, cloud infrastructure, and customer-facing APIs. The role also involves hiring and growing the engineering team, and suits an experienced systems architect with a background in distributed, cloud-native platforms and ML/AI pipelines.
Principal level · 8+ years · Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 40 people in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (computer and information systems managers). range 10–90
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $208,864 (middle half $167,422–$248,313).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
This is a founding 'Head of Software' role with explicit people-management responsibilities (hiring, mentoring, scaling the engineering team), org-wide architectural authority, and direct partnership with the founding team — placing it firmly in the Principal/executive band rather than a typical Senior IC or manager. 11-3021 (Computer and Information Systems Managers) is the primary classification; however, the JD also emphasizes deep hands-on architecture and coding ('turn the full-stack vision into code'), so 15-1252 (Software Developers) is a credible runner-up.
The title 'Head of Software' carries no standard seniority level word, so the title states no level. The actual scope — org-wide platform ownership, team-building, founding-team equity — supports Principal.
Degree requirement: the JD lists 'BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field' as a hard requirement with no 'or equivalent experience' escape clause, so Bachelors is the minimum.
Location: the JD explicitly states 'LA HQ required' — this is an on-site role in Los Angeles; remote is false.
Cloud platform: the JD lists 'GCP, AWS, or Azure' as a hard gate under Requirements. GCP is named first; AWS and Azure are listed as alternatives since any one satisfies the requirement.
Container orchestration: 'Kubernetes, Nomad, Slurm' are listed together as a hard gate; Kubernetes is the primary with Nomad and Slurm as alternatives.
Data streaming: 'Kafka, Beam, Ray, Spark' are listed together as a hard gate; Kafka is the primary with the others as alternatives.
Bonus Qualifications (GPU workloads, distributed training, model serving, IoT/multi-modal data, real-time analytics, forecasting systems) are all listed under an explicit 'Bonus Qualifications' heading and are therefore preferred, not required.
No compensation figures are provided beyond 'competitive salary, full benefits, and hardware budget.'
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): GPU fleet management.
Read the full posting
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