Tech Lead Manager (AI)

Location: Palo Alto, CA; hybrid schedule with 4 days in the office and 3 remote flex days per quarter after the first 3 months.

Salary: $200K–$300K per year, plus equity and bonus.

Company

Building an AI-native social operating system for social commerce, helping brands turn community interactions and social data into personalized customer experiences, analytics, and automation.

What you will do

• Own the technical vision, roadmap, system design, and architectural standards for one or more core engineering teams.
• Build products that ingest large volumes of social data, run AI agents in real time, and deliver customer insights through analytics and automation.
• Write production code, conduct code reviews, solve complex technical bottlenecks, and own critical-path architecture.
• Partner with Product and Design on feasibility, feature scope, requirements, product strategy, and customer problems.
• Drive engineering standards across RFCs, testing, CI/CD, monitoring, post-mortems, and software craftsmanship.
• Mentor engineers, conduct technical interviews, and manage a team of 2–5 through 1:1s, performance reviews, and career planning.

Requirements

• 8+ years of total software engineering experience and 2+ years of formal people management of direct reports on a high-performing engineering team.
• Strong architectural intuition and hands-on full-stack proficiency, including the ability to investigate system bottlenecks, review complex pull requests, and drive architectural consensus.
• Strong product acumen, including forming technical opinions on product direction, challenging unclear specifications, and prioritizing technical work by customer impact.
• Experience collaborating with Product Managers and Product Designers in fast-paced startup environments.
• Bias toward action and comfort working in high-growth, ambiguous environments with changing priorities.
• Exceptional direct written and verbal communication, including translating complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders.
• Active hands-on experience or deep technical interest in incorporating LLMs, AI agents, and modern AI workflows into software architecture.

Nice to have

• Experience at an early- or growth-stage startup.
• Hands-on experience architecting, deploying, or operating AI-powered or agentic software platforms at scale.
• Hands-on experience with React, TypeScript, AWS, Pulumi, Postgres, ClickHouse, or Turbopuffer.
• Technical leadership experience on teams shipping mobile products, ideally with React Native.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work with four office days and three remote flex days per quarter after the first three months.
• Competitive compensation, early equity, and bonus opportunities.
• Health, vision, and dental benefits with a 401(k) match.
• $1,000 monthly housing stipend near the office, $50 monthly mobile stipend, and commuter benefits including a train stipend or Palo Alto parking reimbursement.
• ClassPass membership, free lunch near University Ave., and career growth opportunities.