Tech Lead (AI-First Product)

This is a remote position.

We are looking for a highly capable Tech Lead to design and deliver an AI-enabled product from scratch in an environment where requirements may initially be unclear or incomplete.

This role requires someone who combines strong software engineering fundamentals, product thinking, and hands-on experience building systems powered by LLMs or other AI technologies.

The ideal candidate is comfortable operating in a small company environment, working directly with stakeholders to transform ambiguous business needs into scalable technical solutions.

This is a highly hands-on role requiring strong autonomy, pragmatic decision-making, and the ability to structure messy problem spaces.

Job Activities

• Design and implement scalable architectures for AI-enabled products, including LLM integrations, structured workflows (e.g., classification, extraction, reasoning), and RAG or embedding-based solutions.
• Define technical direction and make pragmatic technology decisions, balancing speed, quality, cost, and reliability, while ensuring maintainability and strong engineering standards.
• Evaluate and improve AI system performance through structured feedback loops, guardrails, and fallback strategies.
• Collaborate closely with stakeholders to translate ambiguous business needs into clear technical solutions, influencing product roadmap and prioritization.
• Own delivery by breaking down complex initiatives, coordinating team efforts, and ensuring timely execution of key milestones.
• Lead by example through hands-on development, code reviews, and mentorship, fostering a high-quality and scalable engineering culture.
• Continuously improve processes, documentation, and development workflows to support team efficiency and growth.

Requirements

• Strong experience as a Tech Lead or Senior Engineer, with the ability to design scalable systems from scratch across modern web architectures (frontend and backend).
• Solid expertise in API design, database modeling, software architecture patterns, and scalability fundamentals.
• Hands-on experience integrating LLM APIs into production systems, with a strong understanding of prompting strategies, structured AI workflows, and concepts such as RAG, embeddings, semantic search, and tool/function calling.
• Ability to evaluate and optimize trade-offs between model performance, cost, and latency, while ensuring reliability through guardrails and structured output strategies.
• Strong product and problem-solving mindset, with the ability to identify gaps, structure ambiguous problems, and make decisions with incomplete information.
• Excellent communication skills, able to simplify complex technical concepts and effectively align with non-technical stakeholders, including negotiating scope and priorities.

Nice to Have

• Experience with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot) and proven ability to increase development velocity using AI.
• Experience in early-stage startups or small teams, including launching v1 products and improving undefined or unstructured processes.
• Experience working closely with founders or executive stakeholders.

Originally posted on Himalayas