Product Engineering Lead (QVAC) (100% remote)

Tether; Lisboa; Remote; EUR 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Tether is seeking a Product Engineering Lead to translate direction into features for QV.AC’s on-device AI stack. You will lead the teams building QV.AC’s features and app experience, reporting directly to the CTO and collaborating with product.

The split is roughly 70% engineering leadership and 30% product. You bring experience shipping consumer AI-powered apps, strong product sense, and fluency with JavaScript and React.

Qualifications

• Experience managing engineers or engineering leads who ship consumer products, ideally AI-powered apps.
• Strong product sense to distinguish good features from busy ones.
• Intuition for applied AI and on-device constraints (model size, latency, memory, battery).
• Ability to use AI tools heavily and experiment with new models.
• Proficiency in JavaScript and React.
• Initiative, curiosity, resilience, and ability to give and receive direct critique.
• Bonus: experience with local on-device inference, LLM evals, cross-platform apps, or open source.

Responsibilities

• Engineering: run the app and feature teams, unblock work, maintain high engineering standards.
• Product Partnership: translate vision into scoped, buildable work; align scope with reality.
• Leadership: clarify goals, mentor leads, and model hands-on leadership.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Strong product sense

AI on-device constraints

AI tools usage

JavaScript and React

Initiative and critique

Tools

Local on-device inference

LLM evals

Cross-platform apps

Open source

Job description

Join Tether and Shape the Future of Digital Finance

At Tether, we’re not just building products, we’re pioneering a global financial revolution. Our cutting‑edge solutions empower businesses—from exchanges and wallets to payment processors and ATMs—to seamlessly integrate reserve‑backed tokens across blockchains. By harnessing the power of blockchain technology, Tether enables you to store, send, and receive digital tokens instantly, securely, and globally, all at a fraction of the cost. Transparency is the bedrock of everything we do, ensuring trust in every transaction.

Innovate with Tether

Tether Finance: Our innovative product suite features the world’s most trusted stablecoin, USDT, relied upon by hundreds of millions worldwide, alongside pioneering digital asset tokenization services.

But that’s just the beginning:

Tether Power: Driving sustainable growth, our energy solutions optimize excess power for Bitcoin mining using eco-friendly practices in state‑of‑the‑art, geo‑diverse facilities.

Tether Data: Fueling breakthroughs in AI and peer‑to‑peer technology, we reduce infrastructure costs and enhance global communications with cutting‑edge solutions like KEET, our flagship app that redefines secure and private data sharing.

Tether Education: Democratizing access to top‑tier digital learning, we empower individuals to thrive in the digital and gig economies, driving global growth and opportunity.

Tether Evolution: At the intersection of technology and human potential, we are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, crafting a future where innovation and human capabilities merge in powerful, unprecedented ways.

Why Join Us?

Our team is a global talent powerhouse, working remotely from every corner of the world. If you’re passionate about making a mark in the fintech space, this is your opportunity to collaborate with some of the brightest minds, pushing boundaries and setting new standards. We’ve grown fast, stayed lean, and secured our place as a leader in the industry.

If you have excellent English communication skills and are ready to contribute to the most innovative platform on the planet, Tether is the place for you.

Are you ready to be part of the future?

About the job

QV.AC is a general purpose AI assistant that runs locally on your devices. It gives people real control over their data and how they use AI. No cloud dependency, no data harvesting, and no one else's servers between you and your assistant. Our focus is local, on‑device, privacy‑preserving AI, connected across Tether's peer‑to‑peer ecosystem. We're building the AI assistant people actually own. Product sets the direction.

We're looking for a Product Engineering Lead to turn that direction into features people love, built to a standard that holds up on real devices with real constraints. You lead the teams that build QV.AC's features and app experience on top of our local AI stack, each with its own lead. You report directly to the CTO and take direction from product. Product owns the what and the why. You own the how and the engineering bar.

The split is roughly 70% engineering leadership and 30% product. You're a combination of three things. You're an engineering leader who has helped teams ship consumer products at speed. You have real product sense and can partner with PMs as an equal, shaping what gets built, not just executing it. And you have an intuition for AI systems and their limits, so you can turn emerging capabilities into features that work reliably on-device, without needing to build the models yourself.

Responsibilities

• Engineering - Run the app and feature teams day to day: unblocking, reviewing, and keeping them shipping.- Set and hold a high engineering bar for performance, reliability, and clean APIs.- Own the technical design of features and the API surface between our AI core and the app.- Make sure your teams work closely with our AI research and deep tech teams on code reviews, design, and anything that touches models or inference.

• Product Partnership - Work alongside QV.AC's product managers to turn vision and roadmap into scoped, buildable work.- Push back when scope and reality don't match, and propose better paths when they exist.- Bring an engineering perspective to product decisions, especially on what local models can do well today and what they can't yet.- Help the team move fast, using AI tools and quick prototypes to validate ideas before committing to them.

• Leadership - Create clarity around team goals and make sure everyone knows what success looks like.- Mentor team leads to build strong team operating systems, improve how their teams work with others, and grow as leaders.- Lead by example: roll up your sleeves when the team needs it, and step back when they're ready to own it.

Mandatory:

• Experience managing engineers or engineering leads who ship consumer product, ideally AI-powered apps.

• Strong product sense: you can tell a good feature from a busy one.

• Intuition for applied AI and on-device constraints: model size, latency, memory, battery, and the gap between a good demo and a reliable feature. You don't need ML research expertise, because our core abstracts it away.

• You use AI tools heavily in your own work and enjoy experimenting with new models and capabilities.

• Deep JavaScript and React.

• Initiative, curiosity, resilience, and the ability to give and receive direct critique.

Preferred:

• Bonus Experience with local or on-device inference, LLM evals, cross-platform mobile and desktop apps, or open source.

When in doubt, feel free to reach out through our official website.