About the role
- Build and lead a high-performing engineering pod responsible for critical platform capabilities.
- Define technical strategy, architectural patterns, coding standards, and system design principles aligned with business OKRs.
- Drive technical roadmapping and break down complex requirements into well-scoped sprints.
- Ensure systems are designed for reliability, scalability, and performance with strong observability practices.
- Own quarterly OKRs and feature delivery timelines; maintain visibility into team velocity, blockers, and progress. Be accountable for customer outcomes, business capabilities shipped per engineer, system reliability, and operating cost.
- Identify and mitigate technical risks early; communicate dependencies and trade-offs proactively.
- Define sprint cadence, conduct planning and retrospectives, and drive continuous process improvement.
- Ensure smooth integration with DevOps, QA, and deployment pipelines; own quality gates for releases.
- Hire, onboard, and retain a high-performing engineering team; conduct technical interviews.
- Lead team rituals: sprint planning, code reviews, retrospectives, and design reviews.
- Coach engineers on technical growth, career development, and leadership potential.
- Conduct regular 1-on-1s, provide feedback, and foster a culture of ownership and learning.
- Partner with Product, Design, QA, DevOps, and other engineering pods on priorities and technical constraints.
- Communicate proactively on technical decisions, blockers, and resource needs.
- Advocate for engineering needs while balancing business priorities and delivery timelines.
- Write and review production code as appropriate; maintain technical credibility.
- Unblock engineers on debugging, architecture decisions, and technical problem-solving.
- Lead by example in code quality and operational excellence.
- 6+ years of experience in software engineering, with 3+ years in engineering leadership.
- Proven track record leading engineering teams in high-scale SaaS or enterprise software environments.
- Strong foundation in backend systems: database design, API architecture, distributed systems, and scalability.
- Hands-on experience with modern tech stacks (Python, Java, Go, Ruby); ability to code-review and mentor across languages.
- Deep understanding of testing practices: unit, integration, end-to-end, and performance testing.
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, test automation, and production observability.
- Demonstrated experience redesigning engineering workflows using AI agents and verification controls, with measured productivity gains. Familiarity with AI tools alone is insufficient.
- Proven ability to build, scale, and retain high-performing engineering teams.
- Strong project management skills: breaking down requirements, estimating effort, managing multiple initiatives.
- Excellent communication across technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience defining technical strategy and making architectural decisions with pragmatism and long-term thinking.
- Proven cross-functional collaboration with Product, Design, QA, and DevOps teams.
- Ownership mindset: Take end-to-end accountability for pod outcomes and proactively solve problems.
- Customer-centric thinking: Understand how your pod's work impacts customer experience and business goals.
- Adaptability: Comfortable in fast-growing startup environments; flexible and iterative approach to processes.
- Systems thinking: Aware of how your pod connects to the broader platform and cross-team impacts.
- Relentless commitment to quality and technical excellence.