Lead Application Developer

Technical Lead, Applications
- San Francisco (Remote) - Start-up + Equity

A long-standing client is expanding into the US and Europe. Starting with several hires in the US. This will involve working on a proactive AI assistant rather than a traditional chatbot, with highly reliable AI capable of completing multi-step tasks with minimal user prompting.

• Own the application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile, and desktop.
• Lead and grow a small, senior applications team, including backend, mobile, and desktop engineers.
• Ensure production-grade reliability: observability, monitoring, retries, fallbacks, and failure handling.
• Set the architectural direction for AI-powered product workflows, APIs, and client integrations.
• Ensure AI capabilities are integrated into the product with clear abstractions, predictable behaviour, and graceful failure modes.
• Partner closely with Machine Learning leadership to translate model capability into shippable product features.
• Make high-impact decisions across latency, cost, reliability, security, and user experience.
• Establish a strong execution culture through code reviews, design reviews, and hands-on technical leadership.

• Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems.
• Strong hands-on background building and shipping backend systems used in production.
• Experience delivering AI-powered products, with a deep understanding of model integration trade-offs.
• Excellent system design skills across services, APIs, clients, and data flows.
• Comfort operating across platforms (backend, mobile, desktop), even if your depth is in one.
• Proven ability to make high-impact technical decisions under ambiguity.
• A strong bias toward shipping, iteration, and learning from real-world usage.

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