Head of Technology

Sanctuary Computer; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Sanctuary Computer in New York City, with garden3d, seeks a Head of Technology to lead engineering across our collective. You will align production systems, set engineering standards, and mentor teams spanning Rails, Next.js, firmware, and agent loop work.

You can be based anywhere, with most time at Sanctuary Computer; strong preference for seasoned leaders who can raise the bar on architecture, reviews, and delivery across multiple brands.

Qualifications

• Leadership experience in managing large engineering teams.
• Strong background in building web and native apps.
• Familiarity with agent-based development and TypeScript/Rails tooling.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering across Sanctuary Computer and garden3d brands.
• Set engineering standards, oversee architecture, reviews and delivery.
• Mentor engineers, recruit exceptional talent, and raise technical bar.

Job description

Headquarters: New York City URL: https://sanctuary.computer We are hiring a Head of Technology for the garden3d creative collective, to lead engineering at Sanctuary Computer and garden3d in the era of agentic computer code. Original job posting link About garden3d We are worker owned creative collective, innovating on everything from brands and IRL communities to IoT devices and cross platform apps. We share profit, open source everything, spin out new businesses, and invest in exciting ideas through financial and/or in-kind contributions. Our client roster includes Google, Stripe, Figma, Hinge, Black Socialists in America, ACLU, Pratt, Parsons, Mozilla, The Nobel Prize, MIT, Gnosis, Etsy & Gagosian. We’re the software team behind innovative products like The Light Phone & Mill, and we operate a global, decentralized community space collective called Index Space. We think of our garden3d as collective for creative people, prioritizing a happy, talented, and diverse studio culture. We work on projects that bring value to our world, and we balance deep care for the work we do with a genuine curiosity about life outside of our jobs.

Sanctuary Computer - Development At Sanctuary Computer we’re building a different type of technology shop - one that prioritizes close collaboration between the client and the craftsperson. Our projects range from design-forward websites, to robust web apps, to native mobile development.

XXIX - Design When we started XXIX in 2013, we set out to create a different kind of design studio and we’ve thrived because we continually ask what a creative practice can be. We’re building a radically different kind of organization that values autonomy, growth, transparency, and shared responsibility.

Index - Community Index is network of physical spaces all around the world, Index provides space for the exchange of knowledge and tools. We nurture trust within the creative community through generosity and abundance of ideas and care.

garden3d TK - Media At garden3d, we’re in the early stages of building an experimental media company exploring emerging themes related to the evolving landscape of technology, design and culture. We aim to monetize this outlet, publish books, produce screenplays, and release music. Plus, our partner organizations Lightphone Mill IngredientAI The Head of Technology Role The garden3d Head of Technology has one mandate: everything we build works, holds up in production, and gets built the smartest way available to us. We are a house of brands - Sanctuary Computer (development), XXIX (design), Index Space (community), USB Club (digital community), and the garden3d umbrella itself - and a lot of what all of them ship runs on software we wrote.

Working in close partnership with our founder & president Hugh Francis, this person sets the engineering standard, and builds the culture that holds it. You can be based anywhere. A lot of our people are in New York and there's some gravity here, but we already work across timezones and we would happily hire in Europe, Singapore, Chicago, or wherever you are.

If you're the right person, we want to hear from you. This role works with studio leads, developers, designers, project managers and clients across every garden3d vertical. This person can move between a Rails migration, a Next.js app, a firmware release plan and an agent loop in the same week, and raise the bar on each of them. They span all of garden3d, but their home base is Sanctuary Computer, where roughly 70% of their time goes. Our development studio is where the engineering standard gets set, and where it either holds or slips: architecture, code review, estimation, and the hardest technical calls on our biggest projects.

The other 30% goes to garden3d's broader technology story: how we ship product for USB Club, build with agents across the collective, which tools and platforms we bet on, and what we build for ourselves. They are also how we get better people. Our work is only as good as the engineers making it, so this person hunts for exceptional talent, sells them on us, and sets them up to do the best work of their careers. The ideal candidate looks at a worker-owned collective with four studios, an open P&L and clients like Google, Stripe, Brooklyn Museum and The Nobel Prize, and sees an engineering practice they can propel among the best in the world.

Responsibilities & Mandates

Systems that hold up We build web apps, native apps, data pipelines, content platforms and connected devices for clients who can't afford for them to fall over. This person has engineered complex systems for a long time, and it shows in the architecture they draw before a line is written. They own the technical blueprint on our most important projects, and they make the hard calls on the rest: what to build, what to buy, and what to leave out.

All in on agentic development The way software gets built changed, and we intend to be ahead of it. This person is already deep in it: loop engineering, agents running against evals, agents that open their own PRs, and the guardrails that make all of that trustworthy. They make agentic development the default way Sanctuary Computer works, and they can tell the difference between a demo and a system a team can rely on.

Practical engineering We strongly prefer convention over configuration, boring technology, and platforms that let a small team ship a lot. TypeScript is the default language, Rails and Phoenix handle what they're best at, and we'd rather deploy to a platform like Render or Heroku than run our own infrastructure. This person practices value engineering: the simplest thing that works, built well, at a cost the client is glad to pay.

Code quality at Sanctuary Computer Sanctuary Computer is where our engineering standard lives, so this is where most of their energy goes. They set what good code review looks like, keep our senior developers sharp on architecture and quality, and make sure that bar holds without sl