Project NANDA Fellowship Program
Engineering Manager
Lead the team building the infrastructure for an Internet of AI Agents.
About Project NANDA
Project NANDA (Networked Agents and Decentralized AI) is building the foundational infrastructure for an Internet of AI Agents. The existing internet was designed for humans — DNS resolves domain names typed by people, HTTP serves documents to browsers, PKI authenticates websites for users. None of it handles billions of autonomous agents that need to discover each other, verify capabilities, and transact in milliseconds without a human in the loop.
NANDA's architecture spans discovery (a federated index for agents), identity (cryptographically signed capability documents), federation (a distributed registry across 15+ institutions), and interoperability (native support for MCP, A2A, and NLWeb). NEST is the platform where agents are deployed, registered, and orchestrated on this stack.
Position overview
You'll own both the team and its output. That means hiring the right people, keeping them unblocked, making architectural calls on core infrastructure, and making sure what gets built actually holds up at scale. You'll report into project leadership and work alongside researchers, but the day-to-day direction of the engineering team is yours.
What you'll do
- Manage and grow a distributed team of research fellows and engineers
- Own delivery of core subsystems — planning, resourcing, shipping
- Make architectural decisions on infrastructure, federation, and protocol design
- Hire fellows: define roles, run structured interviews, onboard new members
- Align engineering priorities with the research agenda and project roadmap
- Set up lightweight processes that work for an async, open-source team
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years in software engineering, 2+ years leading or managing teams
- Strong systems fundamentals — distributed systems, networking, databases
- You've built and operated things at scale and lived with the consequences
- Can read a research paper and decide what's worth building
- Clear, precise written communication — critical for async and open-source work
- Comfortable with ambiguity and defining the work, not just executing it
Nice to Have
- Experience in open-source or research-engineering hybrid teams
- Familiarity with agentic frameworks, MCP, A2A, or decentralized systems
- Prior protocol design or developer-facing infrastructure work
Communication & collaboration
- Lead technical discussions and mentor across experience levels
- Work in fast-moving, research-driven environments with evolving requirements
- Strong written documentation for open-source and community audiences
Apply now