Lead Engineer

Rheaction; New York (NY); On-site; USD 200,000 - 275,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Rheaction in New York City seeks a Lead Engineer to serve as a technical anchor on a fast-growing team. This is a hands-on leadership role focused on owning complex initiatives, making architecture decisions, shipping production code, and raising the technical bar.

The ideal candidate has deep systems expertise, startup ownership, and an AI-native approach, with 5–10 years of backend experience and Go expertise.

Qualifications

• 5-10 years of software engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, system design and architecture.
• Hands-on technical leadership; ownership of architecture and production code.
• Strong backend engineering skills; Go experience strongly preferred.
• Experience owning meaningful architecture in B2B or product engineering environments.

Responsibilities

• Own complex product initiatives from architecture through production.
• Design and scale robust distributed systems.
• Make key architectural decisions across performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Remain hands-on and ship production-quality code.
• Lead the technical direction of major customer-facing features.
• Review code and mentor junior and mid-level engineers.
• Work closely with product and engineering leadership.
• Use AI development tools to improve velocity and quality.

Skills

distributed systems

architecture

Go

backend engineering

AI tooling

code review

Tools

Go

AWS

Kubernetes

Redis

Temporal

TypeScript

React

Next.js

Job description

Location: New York, NY - In Person

Employment: Full-time
Experience: 5-10 years
Compensation: $200,000-275,000 + equity

About the Role

We're looking for an exceptional Lead Engineer to serve as a technical anchor on a fast-growing engineering team.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role—not an engineering management position. You'll own complex product initiatives, make important architectural decisions, ship production code, and help raise the technical bar across the team.

The ideal candidate combines deep systems expertise, strong product instincts, startup ownership, and an AI-native approach to engineering.

What You'll Do

• Own complex product initiatives from architecture through production.
• Design and scale robust distributed systems.
• Make key architectural decisions across performance, reliability, and scalability.
• Remain hands-on and ship production-quality code.
• Lead the technical direction of major customer-facing features.
• Review code and mentor junior and mid-level engineers.
• Work closely with product and engineering leadership.
• Use AI development tools to improve engineering velocity and quality.

What We're Looking For

• 5-10 years of software engineering experience.
• Experience as a Tech Lead, Engineering Lead, or senior technical owner.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, system design, and architecture.
• Strong backend engineering skills; Go experience strongly preferred.
• Experience owning meaningful architecture in a B2B or product engineering environment.
• Track record of shipping scalable, customer-facing products.
• Strong product intuition and ability to connect technical decisions to user outcomes.
• Experience mentoring and providing technical direction to other engineers.
• High ownership and ability to operate effectively in a fast-moving startup.
• Comfortable using modern AI coding and development tools as part of the daily engineering workflow.
• Able to work in person in New York City.

Strong Plus

• Experience at a high-growth startup.
• AI / AI-agent product experience.
• Enterprise SaaS or B2B product experience.
• TypeScript / React / Next.js.
• AWS / GCP, Kubernetes, Redis, or Temporal.
• Strong side projects or independent builder track record.