Varick Agents — AI Engagement Manager

Type: Full-time | On-site (5+ days, SF Financial District) | San Francisco, CA Compensation: $200,000–$320,000 + competitive equity Hiring count: 3 Visa sponsorship: None available Reports to: Daniel Kornum, ex-COO Citadel Securities Europe (outreach-template only — not corroborated by any other section; treat as soft)

About Varick Agents

San Francisco–based applied-AI startup that helps enterprises move AI from prototype to reliable production — embedding with customers, auditing their operations, and building the agents, integrations, and workflows required to run them. Building the "AI FDE," an agent designed to do the work of a forward-deployed engineer (scope problems, write and integrate code, deploy production systems with customer teams). Core thesis: the hard part of enterprise AI is deployment, reliability, and trust — not the model.

Founded: 2026 | Team size: 11–50 | Funding: $3.8M seed (~$30M valuation) Industry: AI Tools Website: varickagents.com Office: San Francisco (Financial District)

Why Candidates Should Join

• Real outcomes, not slideware: implementations that ship and run in production — "escape slide-deck purgatory."
• Senior ownership from day one: own the full loop from problem identification through deployment, expansion, and operation, with direct access to operators and execs.
• Shape the company: early team member shaping product, playbooks, and scaling, working with billion-dollar enterprises.

Company Positioning (from outreach template — recruiter context)

Subordinate to the structured/About sections above where they conflict; useful framing for outreach.

• Positions itself as the #1 applied-AI company; claims ~100% production success rate vs. an industry 5–13%.
• Fortune 500 and NASDAQ-listed enterprises come inbound; contracts at 7–8-figure ARR each.
• Last safe at $30M post-money; states offers already coming in at 3–4x.
• Comp framing: majority cash, equity on top.

Intake Call Summary

• No intake call transcript on the role page. An Intake Video is posted but not transcribed — pull/transcribe it before locking scoring nuance if needed.

The Role

AI Engagement Managers are Varick's senior client-facing team — owning enterprise accounts end-to-end (first CFO conversation agents in production second and third engagements) and leading the Forward Deployed Strategists and Engineers on each engagement.

What You'll Be Doing

• Lead the team on the ground; FDS and engineers report to you during the engagement, and you own what they ship and how the client experiences it.
• Sit across from CFOs, COOs, and CROs — run the executive cadence, present findings, defend recommendations under pressure.
• Run the motion end-to-end: first meeting, pre-meeting brief, follow-up, custom demo, engagement letter, expansion — and tighten the playbook for everyone behind you.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into engagements with clear outcomes, ROI targets, and exec sponsors; hold the line on scope.
• Expand accounts post-deployment — map the org, find high-leverage workflows, turn one engagement into three.
• Feed every account back into Varick's playbooks, patterns, and platform.

Fuller Must-Have detail (from role body — note: the sidebar Requirements below are canonical for scoring):

• Track record of owning (not contributing to) a 7- or 8-figure engagement at a top-tier consulting firm (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) or equivalent — ran the team, owned the client relationship, on the hook for the outcome
• Founder/operator instincts (built something, ran a P&L, or owned an operating function)
• AI-native: daily tool use, real POV on where agents work and don't; can scope an AI implementation and brief engineers on what to build
• Extreme ownership; runs engagements with minimal oversight
• Comfortable with 10–20% travel to client sites

Nice-to-Have (from role body):

• EM / Project Leader / Case Team Leader at MBB (digital, AI, finance, or ops focus)
• Principal/VP at a top investment bank or PE firm with operating-side portfolio exposure
• Former COO / VP Ops / Chief of Staff at a high-growth company; has sat on the buy side of a consulting engagement
• Founder/early operator selling into enterprise (esp. office of the CFO/COO)
• Hands-on experience deploying AI tools in a real business context

Requirements

• 4-8 years experience, MBB or top-tier operator background
• Stakeholder navigation with billion-dollar enterprise clients
• C-suite polish: branding, eye contact, calm under pressure
• First-principles analytical depth, not surface-level
• Team leadership track record
• SF Financial District, 5+ days in-person

Green Flags

• Real-time, low-latency responsiveness when the interviewer pivots mid-question.
• Strong, data-validated opinions they can defend without bluffing.
• Attentiveness: notices what is missing and asks the next question.
• Polished delivery, calm presence on a C-suite call.
• Independent: sets their own direction without needing hand-holding.

Red Flags

• Talks too slowly, over-questions, or won't take the lead in the conversation.
• Surface-level analytical answers ("I'd look at revenue and costs").
• Doesn't respond to prompting or feedback; keeps reciting their framework.
• Needs a long onboarding ramp (several weeks or months).
• Polish gap. Won't represent the brand on a C-suite call.

Role Details

Salary$200,000–$320,000EquityCompetitive equity (no % specified)On-site policySF Financial District, 5+ days in-person; 10–20% client travelVisa sponsorshipNone availableEmployment typeFull-timeLocationSan Francisco, CA

Screening Questions

• None listed — the role page has no separate Screening Questions section.

Interview Process

Stage 1 — Pending Approval — Initial approval of submitted candidates. Stage 2 — First Round Stage 3 — Second Round Stage 4 — Third Round Stage 5 — On Site Stage 6 — Offer Stage 7 — Hired — Candidate accepts and starts.

Contrario Submission Form (Required Candidate Q&A)

Standard data fields: Basic Information, LinkedIn, Experience, Github, Current Company, Current Title, Logistics, Location. Plus two explicit questions:

• Do you need sponsorship now or in the future?
• Are you open to relocating to the Bay Area?

No extra authored/free-text questions beyond the bare-bones set.

Not present on the role page: Ideal Companies & Backgrounds, Ideal Candidate Profiles, Rejected Candidate Feedback.