Description
Key Responsibilities :
As our Technical Lead, you will be the hands-on engineering owner for version 1 of our product, working closely with the CTO and founder to design, build and scale a secure, high-quality consumer app from the ground up. This is a foundational role with high ownership, direct impact, and a chance to shape both the technology and the culture of the engineering team.
- Own end-to-end technical implementation of the mobile and backend stack for our MVP and early versions.
- Work with the CTO and product to translate requirements into technical designs, architecture, and detailed tasks.
- Design and implement scalable, secure, and maintainable services and APIs (auth, profiles, matching, chat, payments, etc.).
- Lead by example as a strong hands-on engineer : write clean, tested code and drive code reviews, refactoring, and technical excellence.
- Set up and maintain development workflows : version control, CI/CD, staging/production environments, monitoring, logging, and alerting.
- Integrate third-party services and AI/ML capabilities where appropriate (for matching, personalization, safety/moderation, etc.).
- Ensure data privacy and security best practices, especially around user identity, communication, and payments.
- Collaborate with designers and product to iterate quickly on UX while managing scope and technical debt.
- Mentor and guide junior engineers as we grow the team; help shape hiring standards and technical culture.
- Proactively identify technical risks, performance bottlenecks, and areas for improvement, and drive solutions.
- Stay current with relevant technologies, tools, and industry trends in mobile, backend, and AI, and bring pragmatic suggestions
Required Experience & Skills
- 5 - 10+ years of professional experience in software development, with at least 2+ years in a lead/ownership role (Tech Lead, Senior Engineer, or similar).
- Strong hands-on experience in at least one modern backend stack (e.g., Node.js, Java/Kotlin, Go, .NET Core, Python) and relational/no-SQL databases.
- Solid experience building and deploying production mobile or consumer-facing web applications (Android/iOS native or cross-platform like React Native/Flutter).
- Strong understanding of system design for scalable, low-latency APIs, authentication/authorization, and data modeling.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP) and managed services (databases, storage, queues, monitoring).
- Familiarity with modern engineering practices : Git, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability.
- Good understanding of security and privacy principles for consumer apps (encryption, secure auth, OWASP basics).
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment and make pragmatic trade-offs between speed and quality.
- Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset; comfortable working closely with product, design, and non-technical founders.
Nice To Have
- Prior experience building or scaling B2C mobile apps in social, dating, or marketplace domains.
- Exposure to recommendation systems, personalization, or integrating AI/ML APIs (e.g., for matching, safety, or content understanding).
- Experience in early-stage startups and comfort with greenfield architecture and quick iterations.
- Experience setting up analytics and experimentation frameworks (e.g., event tracking, A/B testing).
(ref:hirist.tech)
