AE Studio

Own client relationships, mentor PMs and Tech Leads, align priorities, ensure quality and smooth releases, grow accounts, and maintain profitability and satisfaction. | Experience leading complex software programs with successful delivery, strong communication skills across technical and executive levels, team building, and understanding of AI alignment; government or research program experience and founder/product leadership are nice to have. | Description: • Own the client relationship; primary contact for clients for wins and challenges. • Mentor and act as escalation point for PMs and Tech Leads, supporting them to turn complex goals into executable plans. • Help clients understand priorities and align on what matters now versus what can wait. • Keep quality high and set conditions for releases to land smoothly as milestones approach. • Keep leadership informed with clean updates and honest forecasts to avoid surprises. • Navigate client organizations to build relationships, clear blockers, and expand impact. • Grow accounts by spotting opportunities, connecting value across initiatives, and driving renewals and expansions. • Balance delivery, satisfaction, and profitability, including candid conversations about money. • Make overall relationships successful: deliver work well, maintain client satisfaction, ensure renewals/expansions, and keep invoices current. Requirements: • You’ve led complex software programs where success was not guaranteed, and you shipped successfully. • You can talk with engineers about tradeoffs, with executives about strategy, and with clients about money without losing anyone. • Experience making distributed teams; ability to spot strong talent and when to say someone is not cutting it. • You write clearly and directly; bad news travels fast through you, and people trust you more for it. • You can understand why AI alignment matters and will be able to explain it in your own words. • Nice to have: You have been a founder, CEO, CTO, or product lead who had to own outcomes in the real world. • Nice to have: You have worked with government or research programs like DARPA, NSF, or ARPA. • Nice to have: You know how to navigate compliance and bureaucracy without losing momentum. Benefits: • Salary range from $150k/year to $210k/year. • Equity in client projects and in Skunkworks ventures. • Equity priced at $0 when granted for tax reasons. • Opportunity to retain 20% of equity if you leave on good terms; retain 100% if you spin out a Skunkworks venture. • Remote work options (Florianópolis office / Brazil remote; Venice, Los Angeles / US remote). • Opportunity to work on Fortune 500, startup, government, and research projects and career growth.