Engineering Team Lead (Next.js)

Location: San Francisco, California, United States

Salary: $230,000–$340,000 per year in San Francisco; compensation outside San Francisco may be adjusted based on employee location.

Company

Vercel builds agentic infrastructure and developer products including Next.js, v0, and AI SDK.

What you will do

• Build, ship, review, and debug production code for the Next.js framework and supporting systems.
• Lead technical initiatives from exploration and architecture through implementation, rollout, and production follow-through.
• Set technical direction across rendering, caching, routing, build systems, runtime behavior, and developer tooling.
• Investigate performance regressions, production failures, and developer pain points while improving quality, testing, reliability, and observability.
• Coach engineers through pairing, design reviews, code reviews, technical feedback, and shared ownership of complex problems.
• Partner with Product, Design, Infrastructure, Developer Experience, and other engineering teams while contributing to the open source community and recruiting.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience with continued effectiveness as a hands-on engineer.
• Experience leading engineers or small technical teams as a team lead, tech lead, staff engineer, engineering manager, or founder.
• Recent experience writing, reviewing, and shipping production code.
• Strong technical judgment across React, framework architecture, rendering, caching, routing, build tooling, and runtime behavior.
• Experience building products or infrastructure for developers, with strong standards for quality, performance, stability, and usability.
• Clear written communication, sound technical decision-making, comfort with ambiguity, and practical use of AI tools in engineering workflows.

Nice to have

• Experience maintaining or contributing to a major open source project, particularly in the React or Next.js ecosystem.
• Experience with compilers, bundlers, caching, rendering systems, or distributed infrastructure.
• Experience leading a small senior engineering team while making substantial individual contributions.
• Experience forming a team or technical direction from zero to one.
• Familiarity with the Next.js codebase.

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation including equity and an inclusive healthcare package.
• Learning and growth support, mentorship, and opportunities to attend relevant events.
• Flexible time off.
• Equipment required for the role and a work-from-home budget.
• Inclusive workplace committed to equal opportunity and non-discrimination.

Hiring process

• Recruiters provide further details about compensation, benefits, equity, and variable pay during the hiring process.