Engineering Lead (AI & Product Engineering) - REMOTE / Fulltime - Mandarin is MUST

Job Title: Engineering Leadership

Duration: Full-time

Location : Remote

This is not a traditional people-management role. You will act as a technical partner to the founders, product team, and engineering team turning ambiguous product goals into clear technical plans, unblocking hard engineering problems, and helping us scale the technical team.

Team Structure

• No CTO or tech co-founder; flat model with a focus on technical leadership
• Role to aid in managing technical landscape and oversee engineering progress

Candidate Requirements

• Experience in AI agents, consumer applications, and recommendation systems
• 5-10 years of experience, ideally with a mix of big tech and startup exposure

Ideal Candidate Profile

• 5+ years of experience, preferably from big tech (Google L5/L6 or equivalent)
• Startup experience is highly valued; Mandarin-speaking preferred

Work experience

Deep specialty in AT LEAST ONE of: AI agents, recommendation systems, or large-scale consumer apps. Currently one of the following: Staff Engineer, Tech Lead, Engineering Lead, Head of Engineering, CTO, Founding Engineer, or hands-on Engineering Manager

Updated

Experience at a VC-backed startup (Series A+) OR fast promotion track in big tech (E5/E6/E7 within 5 years).

Updated

Experience defining hiring bars or building engineering teams from early stage.

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science from strong program.

Hard skills

AI-native actively uses LLMs and agentic tools to augment engineering work daily.

Strong fundamentals across backend, frontend, and mobile domains.

Proficiency in one or more of Python, Go, React, or React Native.

Experience with ML, recommendation systems, or data pipelines.

Soft skills

Strong cross-functional communication with founders and product teams.

Miscellaneous

Must be comfortable speaking Mandarin in a professional environment.

Must be able to work remotely in Pacific Standard Time.

Traits to avoid

Resistant to using AI tools in daily engineering workflow.

Leadership experience only at non-VC-backed or pre-seed companies hard to benchmark caliber.

Big tech only background with no rapid promotion OR startup experience.

Our current technical surface includes Python, Go, Next.js, React, React Native, Flutter, native iOS/Android, AI systems, data infrastructure, and recommendation systems. We do not expect deep expertise in every area. In the AI era, we believe strong engineering leaders should be able to use AI tools to quickly ramp up on new languages, frameworks, and codebases.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical execution across backend, frontend, mobile, AI, and data initiatives
• Act as the technical partner to founders translating product goals into clear technical plans, milestones, and trade-offs across the full stack
• Coordinate cross-domain engineering work, run daily standups, organize team capacity, and remove execution blockers
• Help define hiring needs, identify talent gaps, set technical evaluation standards, and scale the engineering team
• Raise the bar for engineering quality, speed, reliability, and maintainability across the organization
• Lead the development of internal agentic feature development workflows that enable AI-assisted product creation at scale
• Foster an AI-native engineering culture where engineers leverage AI tools to augment their workflows and decision-making