Tech Lead ($220K+ base salary)

Leaping AI; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Leaping AI in San Francisco seeks a CTO-like leader to unite a four-person engineering team around scalable architecture and product excellence. The role focuses on lifting engineering productivity, guiding design, and aligning engineering work with revenue goals.

You will work closely with the CEO/CTO and cross-functional leaders, mentoring engineers, and contributing to codebase as a hands-on leader while maintaining high standards and operational discipline.

Qualifications

• 6+ years in fast-growing startups, staff engineer or tech lead.
• Strong background in software design, cloud architecture and LLMs.
• Proven leadership of an engineering team, with delivery impact.
• Excellent prioritisation and project management skills.
• Strong communication with executives and cross-functional partners.
• Mentors team members and drives productivity improvements.
• Ideally prior leadership at a conversational AI company.

Responsibilities

• Manage the engineering team on a day-to-day basis.
• Guide architectural decisions for the product and platform.
• Have final say on task prioritisation and roadmap alignment.
• Review code and RFCs to ensure quality and consistency.
• Set up engineering best practices, processes and standards.
• Act as liaison to CEO, CTO, Director of Sales, Head of CS.
• Contribute to the codebase personally (20–30% time).

Skills

Staff engineer / tech lead

Software design

Cloud architecture

LLMs

Full-stack apps

Leadership experience

Project management

People skills

Business acumen

Engineering best practices

Mentoring / team development

AI / Conversational AI leadership

Job description

At Leaping AI (YC W25), we are doing voice and texting AI agents for the home improvement industry. We doubled our ARR in the first half of the year and are aiming to double it again in the second half of the year. To support our growing client base, we are looking for a strong tech lead to join us. We currently have four members in our technical staff (incl. the CTO) and we are looking for a CTO-like next hire that can alleviate our CTO in the day-to-day running of the engineering team. This role is one of the most important roles we will hire this year. We are therefore looking for a killer candidate that can lift our entire engineering productivity by 10x. You have CTO like thinking and bring a CTO like attitude to work every day. Please do not apply if you are not confident of leading a team of 4 very talented software engineers and 10x’ing their productivity. You are willing to work hard. We are in the office Monday to Friday here in San Francisco (California Street) - maybe one day per week work from home possible.

Job Responsibilities

• Manage the engineering team on a day to day basis
• Guide the team on architectural decisions
• Have final say on task prioritization
• Review code and RFCs
• Set up engineering best practices and processes
• Act as a strong liaison and sparring partner to decision makers within the company (CEO, CTO, Director of Sales, Head of CS)
• Contribute to the code base yourself (20-30% of your time)

Profile

• 6+ years work experience in fast-growing startups / scale-ups, most recent position being staff engineer or tech lead
• Very experienced in software design, cloud / software architecture, LLMs and full-stack applications
• Hyper-organized and disciplined. You are known as Mr. Reliable. When you promise something to be done, it gets done without delays
• Previous leadership experience of an engineering team
• Excellent project management and prioritisation skills
• Excellent people skills. You enjoy coordinating and talking to people
• Excellent business acumen. You don’t only think of code, but how your work impacts our revenue goals at large
• Opinionated on engineering best practices and processes, ideally from previous work experience
• You can handle pressure - from customers, internal deadlines, other senior stakeholders and your own team
• Excellent at team development - you know how to mentor members of your team and bring them to the next level
• (Ideally on top - if you fulfil this, it would put you in the top 5% of applicants) Previous experience leading an engineering team at a conversational AI company