Tech Lead Manager, Superhuman Docs

Coda; San Francisco (CA); Hybride; USD 180 000 - 260 000; Plein temps

Avantages offerts par ce poste

Health benefits

Insurance

401(k) matching

Parental leave

Paid time off

Holidays

Floating holidays

Sick time

Stipends for caregiving

Stipend for home office

Professional development budget

Résumé du poste

Superhuman is seeking a senior engineer to lead a small team focused on the calc engine of a browser-based database. You will own core aspects of invalidation, execution, and query planning, while remaining closely involved in coding.

The role balances management and hands-on work, aiming to deliver an enterprise-grade product with scalable infrastructure and strong performance at high concurrency.

Qualifications

• Experience with internal components of a database system including query optimization, planning, or storage engines.
• 2–3+ years as an engineering manager or tech lead overseeing a small team.
• This is a player-coach role with both management and hands-on coding responsibilities.
• Interest in building a real product rather than focusing solely on infrastructure.

Responsabilités

• Own invalidation, execution, and query planning for the calc engine and help shape architectural decisions as the system scales.
• Lead a small team (~5 engineers) with code/design reviews and fast feedback while contributing code yourself.
• Drive performance work: profiling, benchmarking, and closing gaps between correctness and speed at scale.
• Coordinate with other teams building on top of the calc engine.

Connaissances

Database internals

EM/tech lead

Hands-on coding

Performance optimization

Cross-team collaboration

TypeScript

Outils

SQLite

WebSockets

OPFS

React

TypeScript

Description du poste

Superhuman offers a dynamic hybrid working model for this role. This flexible approach gives team members the best of both worlds: plenty of focus time along with in-person collaboration that helps foster trust, innovation, and a strong team culture.

About Superhuman

Grammarly is now part of Superhuman, the AI productivity platform on a mission to unlock the superhuman potential in everyone. The Superhuman suite of apps and agents brings AI wherever people work, integrating with over 1 million applications and websites. The company’s products include Grammarly’s writing assistance, Superhuman Docs’s collaborative workspaces, Mail’s inbox management, and Go, the proactive AI assistant that understands context and delivers help automatically. Founded in 2009, Superhuman empowers over 40 million people, 50,000 organizations, and 3,000 educational institutions worldwide to eliminate busywork and focus on what matters. Learn more at superhuman.com and about our values here.

The Opportunity

Superhuman Docs' tables started as a custom, in-memory database designed to run in a browser tab. Our customers have pushed it beyond its limits, and as a result we’re making big changes to our storage and calc engine.

This team owns the full vertical: the formula language and its grammar, the AST parser, the execution planner that determines what to compute and when, execution optimization that keeps millions of concurrent user applications responsive, and the performance infrastructure that makes it all work under real-world load. You’ll lead the small team building it while staying hands-on in the code yourself.

The hard part is building a database building block for non-technical users who are converting their rituals & processes into production software. This means we have to deliver a product that’s cost-sensitive, enterprise-grade, and never predictably accessed.

What You’ll Own

• Invalidation, execution, and query planning for the calc engine
• Architectural decisions to scale the infrastructure as usage and document complexity grow
• Technical direction alongside a small team (~5 engineers) — reviewing code and designs, giving fast feedback, and still writing code yourself
• Performance: profiling, benchmarking, and closing the gap between “correct” and “fast” at scale
• Coordination with the teams building on top of the calc engine

What We’re Looking For

• You’ve worked on the internals of a database system — query optimization, query planning, SQL execution, storage-engine internals (B-Trees, LSM Trees, etc.), or HTAP (hybrid transactional/analytical processing) systems. You don’t need to have built one from scratch; owning a piece of one (a query or storage engine inside a larger system) counts
• 2-3+ years as an EM or tech lead managing a small team (~5), staying close to the code
• This is a player-coach role — roughly half management, half hands-on — not a step away from engineering
• You want to build a real product, not just go deep on infrastructure for its own sake
• Nice-to-have: TypeScript, SQLite, Operational Transforms, WebSockets, OPFS, and React. None of these are gates — strong engineers pick them up fast

What Success Looks Like

Six months in, you’re not just leading the team — you’re one of the people reviewing the hardest query-planning and execution tradeoffs, and the team has someone to turn to who’s actually worked inside a database before.

Compensation and Benefits

Superhuman offers all team members competitive pay along with a benefits package encompassing the following and more:

• Excellent health care (including a wide range of medical, dental, vision, mental health, and fertility benefits)
• Disability and life insurance options
• 401(k) and RRSP matching
• Paid parental leave
• 20 days of paid time off per year, 12 days of paid holidays per year, two floating holidays per year, and flexible sick time
• Generous stipends (including those for caregiving, pet care, wellness, your home office, and more)
• Annual professional development budget and opportunities

Superhuman takes a market-based approach to compensation, so base pay may vary by location. Our US locations are categorized into two compensation zones based on proximity to our hub locations.

For more information about our compensation zones and locations where we currently support employment, please refer to this page. If a location of interest is not listed, please speak with a recruiter for additional information.

Base pay may vary considerably depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The expected salary ranges for this position are outlined by compensation zone and may be modified in the future.

We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, political belief, or any other characteristic protected by law. Superhuman is an equal opportunity employer and a participant in the US federal E-Verify program (US). We also abide by the Employment Equity Act (Canada).