Lead Engineer (Technical Owner) Full Stack

Role Overview

This is a senior individual contributor role designed for someone who wants to grow into broader technical leadership. You will have meaningful ownership from day one.

The team is deeply AI-forward. You will be provided with a Claude Code Pro account ($200/mo) and are expected to actively leverage AI-assisted workflows to maximize development velocity and decision-making.

What you will work on (First 3 Months)

1. Zero-to-One Initiatives

• Studio Partnership Program: Architect and ship the core MVP for this greenfield product.

• Lead the end-to-end implementation including backend, analytics, and reliable instrumentation.

• Sequence milestones to ensure the system is maintainable and ready for rapid post-launch iteration.

2. In-house Architecture Roadmap

• Headless Platform Migration: Lead the transition from a legacy template-based hosting setup to a decoupled, in-house frontend.
• Build the API integration layer between our existing backend infrastructure and our custom stack to unlock UI flexibility and performance.
• Standardize event tracking and attribution across the ecosystem to ensure data-grounded product decisions.

3. Technical Operating Cadence

• Establish a high-velocity release workflow using GitHub and environment-specific deployments.

• Implement a triage rhythm and a “single source of truth” for technical priorities.

• Build out observability and reliability standards to eliminate "flying blind" during shipments.

Stack Context

You will manage and evolve a modern, decoupled architecture:

• AWS: Primary cloud infrastructure.
• GitHub: Version control, CI/CD, and environment management.

• Video Platform (Headless): Video and tutorial hosting via API.

• Shopify: Commerce and storefront management.

• Analytics: GA4, custom event tracking, and attribution dashboards.

• Own technical planning and delivery across product initiatives (scope, sequence, tradeoffs, timelines)
• Triage, prioritize, and resolve incoming technical issues with a calm, structured approach
• Partner with product/design to shape solutions that are maintainable and measurable
• Lead the buildout of new product initiatives (including standalone feature areas with backend + analytics)
• Reduce legacy dependency and establish a clear path to a transition to custom solution 
• Maintain and extend cloud infrastructure (AWS), including reliability, cost awareness, and performance
• Manage and improve deployment pipelines and workflows using GitHub (PR hygiene, environments, releases)
• Set sensible engineering standards (logging, monitoring, testing expectations, documentation)
• Improve analytics instrumentation
• Support and unblock other teams with clear technical communication (without becoming a helpdesk)

• Ability to turn ambiguous goals into clear technical plans
• Architectural ownership and leadership
• Comfort making decisions, documenting them, and aligning stakeholders
• Ability to lead execution while keeping the system stable and understandable
  

• You can implement key pieces yourself when needed
• You keep momentum without sacrificing quality
• You ship in iterations and don’t get stuck in theoretical perfection

• Proven experience owning and driving technical delivery in a startup or small team environment
• Strong full-stack fundamentals and the ability to work across frontend, backend, and infrastructure
• Strong JavaScript/TypeScript foundation and modern web development experience
• Experience integrating third-party services and APIs
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and production operations
• Strong GitHub workflow competence (branches, PRs, code reviews, CI/CD)
• Strong communication skills in English (German is a plus)

• Experience with templated / theme-based web platforms and migrations away from legacy customizations
• Experience with Shopify ecosystems and commerce integrations
• Familiarity with analytics tooling (e.g., GA, event tracking, product analytics, dashboards)
• Experience introducing lightweight incident response routines (on-call not required, but discipline is)

• “Here’s what we’ll do, what we won’t do, and why.”
• “Here are the risks and how we de-risk them.”
• “Here’s the plan and what we need from each function.”

• High ownership and real leverage on product direction
• A mission-driven, international team 
• A product with real users and strong brand pull
• Flexible working hours and pragmatic startup culture
• Room to shape the technical org and future hiring plan

1. A system you inherited that was messy — what did you change in the first 60 days?
2. An example of a tough tradeoff you made between speed and quality.
3. What you’d look at first in our setup (multi-platform + growth + retention).