The Tech Lead will guide a small, senior engineering team at Hamming AI, owning technical direction across the full stack while remaining hands-on in code. This role is critical for scaling and ensuring the reliability of a high-availability, LLM-powered platform that automates QA for voice AI agents.
What You'll Do
- Define technical direction across backend, frontend, and infrastructure, deciding what to maintain versus rebuild.
- Lead a team of five engineers by unblocking them, setting clear priorities, and running lightweight design reviews.
- Ensure system reliability, observability, and stability as platform traffic scales up to 100x.
- Contribute hands-on to key projects weekly, including product experiments and hardening real-time systems.
- Act as cross-functional glue between product and operations to maintain context and accelerate decision-making.
- Write code in TypeScript, Python, or both alongside the team.
- Review architecture proposals and pull requests, guiding decisions without micromanaging.
- Help define sprint priorities and maintain tight, realistic roadmaps.
- Pair with engineers during incidents to fix issues and implement durable solutions.
- Run post-mortems that result in improved systems, not just documentation.
- Evaluate new technologies—including LLMs, infrastructure tools, and observability stacks—and decide what to adopt.
What We're Looking For
- 6 - 10 years of experience leading engineering pods of 3 - 6 engineers in high-availability, high-frequency deployment environments.
- Proven experience building and operating real-time or distributed systems such as workflow engines, WebRTC/telephony, or large fan-out queues.
- Continued enjoyment of shipping code and debugging complex technical issues personally.
- Strong fundamentals in backend development, infrastructure, and system architecture.
- Ability to discuss product tradeoffs fluently alongside technical decisions.
- Proficiency across TypeScript/Node.js, Python, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes).
- Experience designing LLM-powered systems that are testable, measurable, and resilient.
- Clear, direct, concise, and respectful communication style with a default to writing things down.
- Focus on outcomes over process.
Nice to Have
- Experience building AI products, especially in voice or real-time systems.
- Prior work at an early-stage startup with a positive reflection on the experience.
- Strong instinct for turning chaotic situations into repeatable, scalable systems.
Technical Stack
Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, OpenAI, Anthropic, STT/TTS providers, LiveKit, Pipecat/Daily, Temporal, AWS, k8s, PostgreSQL, Redis, Terraform, OpenTelemetry, SigNoz
Team & Environment
- Team size: 5 engineers
- Structure: Small, senior engineering pod
- Reports to: CEO (Sumanyu)
- Culture: Outcomes over output, demo early and document decisions, own incidents and drive durable fixes, direct communication, fast iteration with 4x daily production deployments, minimal red tape
Benefits & Compensation
- Remote work within North America or option to work from Austin, TX
- Fast-paced environment with frequent production deployments (4x/day)
- Culture of demoing early and documenting decisions for fast context sharing
- Incident ownership with focus on durable fixes and crisp notes
- Direct, candid, respectful communication across remote and HQ teams
- Outcomes over output mindset with adaptive roadmaps based on new data
Work Mode
- Type: hybrid
- Locations: Remote (North America), Austin, TX
- Flexibility: Full-time with remote flexibility across North America or onsite in Austin
Hamming AI is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
