Remote Founding Tech Lead & Platform Architect

Safestay PLC; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

SafeStay is hiring a founding Engineering Manager and Technical Lead to shape the technical vision, stand up the platform, and hire and lead the engineering team that brings it to life.

As a player-coach, you will own systems ingesting partner activity, serve as the billing source of truth, and power claims handling for partners. The decisions you make in year one will define scale for years to come.

Qualifications

• Seven or more years of full-stack software engineering experience.
• Two or more years managing or formally leading engineering teams.
• Track record building and scaling backend systems and APIs, ideally billing or transactional.
• Experience integrating with third-party partner systems and bi-directional sync.
• Experience in modern tech stacks and architectures.
• AI-forward engineering leadership and ability to hire/grow teams.
• Strong data modeling instincts with reconciliation/audit trails.
• 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

Team leadership

Full-stack engineering

Backend systems

APIs and billing

Third-party integration

AI-forward leadership

Data modeling

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

SafeStay is hiring a founding Engineering Manager and Technical Lead to shape the technical vision, stand up the platform, and hire and lead the engineering team that brings it to life.

As a player-coach, you will own systems ingesting partner activity, serve as the billing source of truth, and power claims handling for partners. The decisions you make in year one will define scale for years to come.