Tech Lead
Summary
Leads a small engineering team at a seed-funded SaaS startup building AI voice and texting agents for home services, defining architecture and processes while contributing hands-on to the codebase.
About the Role
A fast-growing, Y Combinator–backed startup building AI voice and texting agents for the home improvement and home services industry is looking for a Tech Lead to scale engineering impact and organizational maturity. This is a high-ownership, high-visibility role that sits at the intersection of hands-on engineering and technical leadership — partnering directly with the CTO and senior leadership to shape architecture, processes, and team productivity.
The company is at an early but rapidly scaling stage (seed-funded, ~10 employees), operating in the conversational AI / voice SaaS space. You'll help define how the engineering organization grows and executes from here.
This role is on-site in San Francisco, CA. No visa sponsorship is available — candidates must have the right to work in the US.
What You'll Do
Manage the engineering team day-to-day: unblock engineers, set priorities, and drive delivery.
Guide the team on architectural decisions and system design across the full stack and cloud infrastructure.
Hold final say on task prioritization and delivery tradeoffs.
Review code and RFCs to maintain quality, consistency, and engineering standards.
Establish and enforce engineering best practices and processes as the team scales.
Act as a technical liaison and thought partner to the CEO, CTO, Director of Sales, and Head of Customer Success.
Contribute actively to the codebase (~20–30% of your time).
Raise the overall productivity and maturity of the engineering organization.
What We're Looking For
Required:
6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with recent roles as a Staff Engineer or Tech Lead.
Proven leadership and people management experience — you've led engineering teams and mentored engineers.
Strong background in software architecture, cloud platforms (Microsoft Azure preferred; AWS/GCP also relevant), and full-stack development.
Hands-on experience with LLMs and conversational AI / voice technology — this is a hard requirement.
Experience working in fast-growing startups or scale-ups and shipping quality product under pressure.
Excellent project management, prioritization, and organizational skills.
Strong people skills and genuine business acumen — you think about how technical decisions affect revenue and customers.
Ability and willingness to work in-office in San Francisco, CA.
Right to work in the United States (no visa sponsorship available).
Nice to Have:
Prior leadership experience in a conversational AI or voice technology product.
Experience deploying ML/NLP models in production at scale in cloud-based SaaS environments.
Track record of advocating technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders across go-to-market and customer-facing functions.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary: $220,000 – $250,000 USD annually
Early-stage equity in a funded, high-growth startup
Direct impact on product, team, and company trajectory from an early stage
Location
San Francisco, CA — on-site (in-office)
Remote work is not available for this role
No visa sponsorship; candidates must have existing US work authorization