Head of Technology

We're looking for an Head of Technology : who can own the technical health and growth of our backend platform. You'll be part architect, part tech lead, part engineering manager. You won't just review code — you'll set the standard for how code is written, how systems are designed, and how the team thinks about quality, cost, and customer impact. This is not a senior IC role where you write code all day. And it's not a pure management role where you're in meetings all day. It's the balance between the two — the person who makes the team better while staying close enough to the code to make good decisions

Responsibilities

Own the health of a production multi-tenant Node.js/TypeScript backend serving real-time messaging traffic; Lead incident response, root cause analysis, and post-mortem culture; Identify and drive reduction of technical debt; Ensure monitoring, alerting, and observability are in good shape (New Relic, Sentry, Pino structured logging); Work across multiple backend services and ensure they integrate reliably; Design and review system architecture decisions — schema changes, service boundaries, async workflows (Temporal.io), queue design; Drive engineering standards: code review culture, PR quality, test coverage, error handling patterns; Establish and enforce engineering practices that let the team ship fast without accumulating hidden risk; Evaluate build vs. buy decisions with a clear eye on long-term maintainability; Maintain a clear understanding of infrastructure costs (AWS, third-party APIs, LLM usage, DB compute); Actively flag cost anomalies and propose architectural or operational changes to address them; Balance engineering investment against business return; Set a high bar for code quality; Build a review culture where feedback is constructive, specific, and educational; Help engineers grow by pair debugging, design reviews, and code walkthroughs; Define and document coding conventions, architecture patterns, and engineering principles that persist beyond any individual; Understand that the systems you build serve real D2C businesses who depend on them to communicate with their customers; Treat reliability issues with the urgency of a customer escalation, not a backlog item; Stay connected to what support and product teams are seeing from customers; Translate technical complexity into clear, honest language for non-technical co-founders and stakeholders; Communicate risk, timelines, and tradeoffs clearly; Manage up: surface the right problems at the right time without waiting to be asked; Manage expectations — both internally with the team and externally with leadership; Navigate the tension between shipping fast and building right; Know when to take on short-term debt and when to push back; Make architectural decisions that serve the next 18 months, not just the next sprint

Requirements

7–8 years of backend software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a lead or staff-level role; Strong command of TypeScript/Node.js in production; Deep understanding of multi-tenant SaaS architecture patterns; Hands-on experience with relational databases (MySQL/PostgreSQL), ORM usage (TypeORM or similar), and writing efficient queries at scale; Experience designing and operating async/event-driven systems (message queues, workflow engines, or similar); Comfort with cloud infrastructure (AWS preferred) and cost/performance monitoring; Strong pull request review discipline

Nice to have

Experience with real-time systems (WebSockets, Socket.IO, pub/sub patterns); Exposure to LLM integration, RAG pipelines, or AI feature development in production; Experience with Temporal.io or similar workflow orchestration; Familiarity with WhatsApp Business API, omnichannel messaging, or e-commerce integrations; Prior experience at a startup in the 10–100 person range where you had to set standards, not just follow them

Benefits

Meaningful ownership — you'll shape how engineering works here, not just execute someone else's vision; Direct access to founders and product decisions; Competitive compensation (cash + equity discussion based on profile); A product that real businesses depend on every day — your work matters immediately