Remote Technical Lead, Developer

Our everyday digital experiences are in the midst of a realtime revolution. Whether chatting alongside a live streaming event, receiving realtime financial information, or working with colleagues in an online collaborative environment - consumers simply expect realtime digital experiences as standard. At Ably we’re not just witnessing this revolution, we’re powering it - at scale.

At the heart of our mission lies a commitment to putting developers first. Ably provides a suite of products to build, extend, and deliver powerful digital experiences in realtime, delivering billions of messages for millions of devices every day and supporting organizations like Harness, EA, Panasonic and Hub Spot.

Working at Ably means helping to build the infrastructure and technology that will power and shape the future of the internet. The opportunity in front of us is immense. And we’d like your help.

About this role

As the Technical Lead for Developer Experience at Ably you will co-own the Dev Ex vision and strategy, transforming our dashboard, documentation platform, and control plane into a world-class experience. You are a senior, hands-on engineer who’s passionate about building for developers like yourself; someone who’ll obsess over the developer journey and elevate the user experience of the Ably platform.

You’ll blend deep full-stack expertise with a strong product and lead a team of five engineers where the feedback loop is immediate, because you and your team are the target users of the very ecosystem you are building.

• Lead technical execution and vision. You’ll lead a team of five engineers building customer-facing web applications. You’ll partner with the Dev Ex PM as a unified leadership team, co-owning the delivery of a developer experience that becomes a reference point for the industry.
• Drive a product-first engineering culture. You’ll foster an environment where engineers are themselves principal stakeholders of product features, and obsess over customer outcomes. You’ll challenge the "feature factory" mentality and build a team that takes true ownership of the product.
• Be the technical authority. You’ll own the technical architecture and design decisions for our dashboard, docs platform, marketing website, and billing UI. You will ensure these applications effectively demonstrate Ably's realtime capabilities.
• Thrive in a rapid iteration environment. You’ll operate in a high-velocity workspace where PMs, customers, and engineers co-create features. You’ll lead the team in working full-stack to iterate, improve, and ship improvements quickly.
• Champion AI-assisted development. You’ll be a catalyst for AI adoption across the team. You’ll leverage LLMs and AI tools to accelerate velocity without compromising on engineering integrity.
• Guide engineering outcomes and quality. You’ll set and enforce high standards for code review, testing, and production readiness. You will participate in incident response and coordinate with the Infrastructure team on platform dependencies and deployments.
• Mentor and grow the team. You’ll manage performance, career development, and hiring. You will hold the team accountable for delivery commitments while providing the mentorship needed to turn engineers into product-minded leaders.

• Extensive experience leading technical teams in technical B2B SaaS or API-first products, with a track record of product-minded engineering teams that take initiative and ownership of product outcomes.
• A strong software engineering background with expertise in React, Type Script, and modern JavaScript, alongside backend experience in Ruby on Rails or Node.js. You have a proven track record building and shipping customer-facing web applications at scale and you must be able to write code and build prototypes that use our APIs.
• You have a natural empathy and instinct for what developer customers want because you are the target user. You are genuinely excited about building developer tools and can tap into immediate feedback loops. You understand API design, documentation, and the nuances that differentiate a great developer journey.
• You act as an AI…