Lead Engineer

Lead Engineer

We are looking for a lead engineer to help scale both our engineering organization and the platforms that power Duetti.

This is a highly visible leadership position that combines technical execution, team leadership, operational excellence, and cross functional collaboration.

You will remain a hands-on contributor while also helping lead a growing backend engineering team. You will work closely with the head of engineering, product, data, research, and business stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery of critical initiatives across the company.

The ideal candidate is a strong technical leader who enjoys solving difficult engineering problems, developing engineers, improving processes, and driving execution. You understand how to balance engineering quality with business needs, can navigate ambiguity, and know how to align teams around shared objectives.

This role is ideal for someone who wants to have a direct impact on both the technology and the growth of the engineering organization.

You will:

• Own delivery of critical engineering initiatives across multiple product areas.
• Translate high level business objectives into clear engineering plans and milestones.
• Partner closely with product and engineering leadership to define technical priorities.
• Help ensure projects are delivered on time and with a high standard of quality.
• Proactively identify risks, dependencies, and execution challenges before they impact delivery.

• Actively contribute to architecture, design, implementation, and code reviews.
• Build scalable services and platform capabilities.
• Participate in debugging, troubleshooting, and production support.
• Lead complex technical initiatives and serve as a technical resource for the broader team.
• Establish and promote engineering best practices across the organization.

• Help recruit, interview, and onboard engineers.
• Mentor engineers through technical guidance and career development.
• Create an environment focused on accountability, collaboration, learning, and execution.
• Help define responsibilities, expectations, and growth paths for team members.
• Lead by example through both technical excellence and professionalism.

• Establish consistent engineering standards and development practices.
• Improve sprint planning, estimation, prioritization, and release management processes.
• Help create scalable operating procedures as the team continues to grow.
• Drive improvements around testing, code quality, observability, documentation, and reliability.
• Ensure alignment across engineers, teams, and initiatives.

• Work closely with product managers to refine requirements and scope initiatives.
• Communicate project status, risks, and trade-offs to leadership.
• Collaborate with data, research, operations, and other business teams to understand needs and deliver solutions.
• Help balance short-term business objectives with long-term platform investments.

• Partner with the head of engineering on roadmap planning and resource allocation.
• Help establish team okrs and measurable success criteria.
• Track execution against goals and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Participate in defining the future structure and growth of the engineering organization.

Requirements:

Experience:

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 1+ years leading or managing engineering teams.
• Experience operating in high-growth startup environments, ideally series b, c, or d companies.
• Experience building and maintaining production systems at scale.
• Demonstrated success leading engineering projects from planning through delivery.

Technical skills:

• Expert level backend development experience using python.
• Strong experience designing apis and distributed systems.
• Deep understanding of cloud native architectures and aws services.
• Experience with kubernetes, docker, terraform, ci/cd, and modern infrastructure practices.
• Strong understanding of system design, scalability, reliability, security, and performance optimization.
• Experience working with relational databases and data intensive systems.

Leadership:

• Proven ability to lead technical teams while remaining hands on.
• Ability to build trust and alignment across teams.
• Comfortable making decisions and driving accountability.
• Leads through influence, collaboration, and example.

Communication:

• Exceptional communication skills.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts in a concise and structured manner.
• Comfortable communicating with executives, engineers, product managers, and non technical stakeholders.
• Strong written communication and documentation skills.

Problem solving:

• Highly organized and execution oriented.
• Able to break large initiatives into manageable milestones.
• Strong prioritization skills and business judgment.
• Focused on finding solutions rather than simply identifying problems.
• Comfortable balancing speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.

$180,000 - $200,000 a year