Engineering Lead, Software Engineer

Engineering Lead

Department:
Engineering |

Location:

Palo Alto HQ | Type:
Full-time, On-site

We're looking for an Engineering Lead to own a significant area of the Pika platform — leading a pod of engineers while staying deeply hands‑on. You'll set technical direction, drive architecture decisions, ship critical features, and raise the bar for the team through mentorship and code review.

Our engineering team is early-stage and growing fast. We need someone who can combine strong individual contribution with the instincts to uplevel everyone around them. Expect to spend 50-60% of your time writing code and the rest leading, reviewing, and unblocking.

• Lead a team of 3-6 engineers — set priorities, unblock the team, run sprints, and ensure consistent delivery
• Stay hands‑on — you're writing code daily, owning major features, and making architecture decisions
• Drive technical architecture — make system design decisions for your area, write RFCs, and build consensus across engineering
• Raise the engineering bar — code reviews, architecture guidance, pair programming, and mentorship for the team
• Own delivery — break down ambiguous product requirements into shippable milestones and hit deadlines
• Collaborate cross‑functionally — work with product, design, and research to align technical execution with product vision
• Improve engineering processes — CI/CD, testing, on‑call, incident response, and development workflows
• Recruit and grow the team — participate in hiring, onboarding, and building a strong engineering culture

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a tech lead or engineering lead role
• Strong technical foundation — distributed systems, API design, database architecture, cloud infrastructure
• Proven leadership — you've led teams, mentored engineers, and shipped products through ambiguity
• Hands‑on by choice — you lead from the codebase, not just from meetings
• Experience with high‑growth startups — you thrive in fast‑moving environments where scope changes
• Strong communication — you can articulate technical trade‑offs to both engineers and non‑technical stakeholders
• Proficiency in Type Script/Node.js or Python
• Experience with cloud infrastructure — AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines

• Experience with AI/LLM products or agent systems
• Experience building real‑time, multi‑platform systems
• Experience scaling teams from 5 to 20+ engineers
• Previous founding or early‑stage startup experience