Tech Lead

Kavak; São Paulo; On-site; BRL 300,000 - 540,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental coverage

Meal and/or food voucher

Mobility support

Life insurance

On-site parking

Flexible scheduling

Job summary

Kavak in Brazil is seeking a Tech Lead to steer a development team across Brazil and Argentina, keeping the Purchasing platform running and building the Sales platform, while initiating Car Journey from scratch with a focus on the customer lifecycle.

You will stay hands-on, mentor five engineers, design scalable architectures, and ensure AI remains a core part of the product, coordinating with Product and Business teams to align roadmaps and deliver impact.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with backend focus.
• Professional experience with Java or Go and microservices.
• Experience designing solution architectures and leading tech teams.
• Strong negotiation skills and ability to balance product priorities.

Responsibilities

• Own the quality of code and architecture produced by the team.
• Design architectures and explain low-level technical decisions.
• Make critical technical decisions shaping product direction.
• Keep AI as a core component of the design.

Skills

Java

Go

Backend architecture

Microservices

APIs

Team leadership

Negotiation

Fast-paced env

AI-enabled dev

Tools

React Native

Job description

About Kavak

As the first Mexican unicorn, with a presence in several countries and an AI-first business model, Kavak is redefining the used car market and the experience of millions of users in LatAm. We have been one of the most highly valued companies in the region and recently closed a USD $300M investment round led by Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest investments they have made in Latin America. With this growth, we are excited to add people who will help us build the next chapter of our product and take our efforts to build with artificial intelligence to the next level.

We build with AI across our core operation: from conversational commerce, to generative marketing, to systems that extract insights from millions of interactions. We are a team that imagines the impossible, builds it, and lives disruption, proactivity, and ambition in a hypergrowth context.

About the role

As Tech Lead in our new development team in Brazil, you will build the technology that powers Kavak’s processes in the country. The Purchasing platform is already live and you will keep it running, develop the Sales platform, and make sure everything reaches production. You will also start Car Journey from scratch, with a focus on the customer lifecycle.

You will lead a team of 5 engineers across Brazil and Argentina, report to the Senior Engineering Manager, and stay hands-on. You will help develop/customize core services, create localized tools and bring our AI harness from Mexico to Brazil and build specialized agents that fulfill what each customer wants to do (buy, sell, get a loan, renegotiate), with a personalized agent for every customer.

Responsibilities

• Own the quality of the code and architecture the team produces.
• Design solution architectures and be able to explain what was built at a low level of detail.
• Make critical technical decisions that shape product direction and business results.
• Keep AI as a core component of the design.

Team leadership

• Coordinate a team of 5 engineers located in Brazil and Argentina.
• Stay hands-on, writing code alongside the team.
• Foster a culture of high ownership, where the team decides what to build and how, instead of just closing tickets.

Product and business impact

• Align with Product and Business teams on the roadmap of our applications.
• Negotiate priorities, backlog, and scope with Product and Business.
• Take Purchasing, Sales, and Car Journey from roadmap to production.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering.
• Professional experience with Java or Go
• Strong backend experience with microservices and APIs.
• Experience designing solution architectures.
• Experience coordinating technology teams.
• Strong negotiation skills, including negotiating backlog with Product.
• Experience working in a fast-paced environment.

Plus

• Familiarity with React Native, our frontend stack.
• Professional proficiency in Spanish

Key qualities

• Proactive, and comfortable stepping out of your comfort zone to figure out what needs to be done.
• Experience at early-stage or growth-stage startups.
• Enthusiasm for working with AI-assisted development and agent-based products.

Kavak Talent Mindsets

• Deliver Impact: You prioritize what generates measurable results and raise the bar using technology and data. You have a consistent track record of delivering relevant and measurable results.
• Engage Fast: You act on problems and opportunities. You decide on time, advance in short cycles, and adjust when necessary without compromising standards.
• Engage with Purpose: You act with extreme ownership, taking total responsibility for results that impact your work and aligning decisions with Kavak's vision and purpose.
• Play to Win Together: You prioritize collective results over individual success.

Benefits in Brazil

• Medical and dental coverage for you and your legal dependents
• Wellhub: physical activities and mental health support
• Meal and/or food voucher: credit on the Flash card, for you to choose where and how to use it
• Mobility support or transportation voucher
• Free on-site parking
• Chartered transportation (no deduction)
• Life insurance
• Amparo: To support for you and your family through the administrative, financial, and emotional challenges of losing a loved one
• Birthday day offExtended paternity leave
• Discount on car purchases from Kavak’s inventory, plus 4 inspections at a symbolic price, per current policy