REF: 032
Role: CTO/ Head of Engineering
Can be based in: Austin, New York or San Francisco (United States)
Salary: $150,000 - $230,000 + Equity + Bonus
Our client is redefining customer engagement for e-commerce brands by empowering them with their own AI-powered ambassadors to deliver hyper-personalized Email and SMS interactions at an unprecedented scale.
Their platform enables brands to communicate with their audience in a natural and contextually relevant manner, driving higher engagement and conversion rates. While increasing and driving measurable growth, they help brands stay focused on what matters most - the customer.
Why join them?
- They're a fast-moving team building a high-growth company that's transforming the e-commerce industry. As an early team member, you'll play a key role in shaping both their product and the future of e-commerce, with the opportunity to grow alongside them.
Recent wins
- Developed a segmentation engine that leverages e-commerce platform data to personalize interactions in a compliant manner, at scale (40M+ consumers and growing 10% MoM)
- Built out a data pipeline capable of handling millions of events daily
- Enabled the use of multiple LLMs for a single interaction, optimized for the best performance while reducing costs
- Onboarded some of the largest e-commerce brands across the industry (e.g. Backcountry, J. Jill, Fabletics, Sur La Table) turning them into massive believers in both their product and vision
They'd like to work on
- Refining their AI infrastructure to enable deeper segmentation, optimize customer-level memory, and integrate advanced agentic workflows for greater adaptability and efficiency
- Enhancing their AI conversation engine to deliver self-optimizing interactions that gather actionable feedback
- Expanding self-service capabilities to provide brands across the industry seamless access to the platform
- Expanding their image creation capabilities to provide brands with a wider medium of emails to send, thus offsetting end brand costs and increasing product adoption
Role Responsibilities
- Serve as a hands-on engineering leader, dedicating ~80% of your time to IC-level contributions (coding, reviewing, debugging)
- Architect and maintain scalable, reliable backend infrastructure capable of supporting rapid growth and real-time AI-powered communications
- Lead and mentor a growing team of engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and high ownership
- Drive architectural decisions and technical roadmap in partnership with the founding team
- Design and implement core infrastructure that supports AI-native applications, including multi-agent workflows, model routing, and real-time feedback loops
- Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, and data to prioritize and deliver high-impact features
- Balance speed with technical rigor in a fast-paced, high-growth environment
What we're looking for (ideally)
- 8+ years of backend engineering experience with deep architectural ownership
- Proven track record of building and scaling backend systems, preferably in fast-growing SaaS, messaging, or e-commerce environments
- Comfortable working in TypeScript (NestJS) and AWS-based infrastructure
- AI-first mindset - you instinctively reach for AI-native solutions when designing systems, products, and workflows
- Deep experience with or interest in LLMOps, AI application infrastructure, and emerging tools that accelerate AI product development
- Excitement about using AI coding tools to boost velocity (e.g. Cursor, Copilot)
- Experience leading or mentoring small, high-performing engineering teams
- Pragmatic and adaptable - someone who thrives wearing many hats
Tech Stack
- Frontend: React (TypeScript)
- Backend: NestJS (TypeScript)
- Infrastructure: AWS managed with Terraform
- Databases: PostgreSQL & ClickHouse
