Founding Tech Lead & Architect — Remote, Equity

SafeStay; New York (NY); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

SafeStay in the United States is hiring a founding Engineering Manager and Technical Lead to build the platform from the ground up. You will shape the technical vision, stand up the system of record and billing, and recruit and lead a small team of engineers in a player-coach capacity.

As the primary architect and hands-on coder early on, you will own ingestion of partner activity, enable accurate invoicing, and power claims handling.

Qualifications

• Seven or more years of full-stack software engineering experience.
• Two or more years managing or formally leading engineering teams.
• Experience building and scaling backend systems and APIs, ideally financial, billing or transactional systems where correctness matters.
• Experience integrating with third-party partner systems and building bi-directional sync.
• Experience in modern tech stacks and architectures.
• An AI-forward engineering leader: a technical leader who builds with AI daily.
• Proven ability to hire, grow and lead engineering teams, with a genuine appetite for both leadership and code.
• Strong data modeling instincts and comfort with reconciliation, audit trails and systems of record.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional partnership skills.

Responsibilities

• Build the team. Hire, onboard and lead a high-performing team of engineers, and set the bar for talent, culture and technical excellence.
• Set technical direction. Own architecture and technical strategy across ingestion, the system of record, reconciliation and invoicing, and the claims portal.
• Ship as a player-coach. Stay hands-on in the codebase, especially in the early months, while growing the team's ability to deliver without you in the critical path.
• Guard data integrity. Treat billing and claims data with the rigor of a financial system. Correctness, auditability and reconciliation are non-negotiable.
• Partner cross-functionally. Work closely with product, operations, finance and partner-facing teams to translate business needs into reliable systems.
• Establish the foundations. Set engineering practices, on-call, quality standards, and the roadmap for a durable, scalable platform.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

Engineering leadership

Backend systems

APIs & integrations

AI-forward leadership

Hiring & mentoring

Data modeling & reconciliation

Cross-functional collaboration

Code ownership

Job description

SafeStay in the United States is hiring a founding Engineering Manager and Technical Lead to build the platform from the ground up. You will shape the technical vision, stand up the system of record and billing, and recruit and lead a small team of engineers in a player-coach capacity.

As the primary architect and hands-on coder early on, you will own ingestion of partner activity, enable accurate invoicing, and power claims handling.