Job Title: Lead Product Engineer
Role Overview:
We are seeking a Lead Product Engineer to spearhead the development and launch of an innovative AI chat product aimed at automating business processes such as content creation and training. This role involves close collaboration with the CEO to shape the product vision, prioritize features, make crucial technical decisions, and drive the product toward achieving market fit. As the Lead Product Engineer, you will play a key role in crafting the product strategy, overseeing the engineering team, and ensuring the successful delivery of new features and improvements.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Feature Development:
- Within the first 6 months, lead the design and implementation of new features that align with our product strategy and market needs. This involves influencing the product roadmap, creating feature specifications, and integrating user feedback.
2. Product Reliability:
- Focus on improving product reliability within the first 3 months by enhancing system stability, optimizing performance, addressing error handling, and ensuring data integrity, all while maintaining high system uptime.
3. User Experience Enhancement:
- Continuously work with the team to refine the user experience based on feedback and usage data. This includes optimizing user interfaces, improving workflows, and ensuring that the product is both intuitive and efficient.
4. Product-Market Fit:
- Oversee efforts to steer the product towards achieving market fit within 12 months. This may involve analyzing market trends, assessing user feedback, and making strategic decisions or pivots as necessary.
5. Team Management and Mentorship:
- Manage and mentor the existing engineering team, focusing on improving their productivity and skills within 6 months through effective code reviews, pair programming, and regular feedback.
6. Scalable Architecture:
- Design and implement a scalable architecture that supports growth in user base and feature set, ensuring that the product can adapt to evolving business needs.
7. Team Expansion:
- Lead the hiring process to grow the engineering team, focusing on defining roles, conducting interviews, and onboarding new team members while fostering a strong and positive engineering culture.
8. Core Competencies:
- Innovative Problem-Solving: Ability to generate creative solutions and think outside the box.
- Architectural Design: Expertise in creating scalable and robust systems, connecting high-level concepts to specific product features.
- Attention to Detail: Strong focus on code quality, thorough testing, and comprehensive documentation.
- Leadership: Ability to inspire and motivate team members, promoting a positive and productive work environment.
- Effective Communication: Proficient in conveying complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Self-Driven: Motivated to advance projects with minimal oversight.
- Adaptability: Comfortable navigating ambiguity and adjusting to rapid changes in direction.
- Product Insight: Skilled at understanding user needs and translating them into actionable technical requirements.
- Entrepreneurial Spirit: Enthusiasm for building and growing a product within a startup environment.
Qualifications:
- Experience: Minimum of 5 years in software engineering, with at least 2 years in a lead or senior role.
- AI Technologies: Demonstrated interest and experience with Generative AI and Chat AI technologies, through professional projects or personal initiatives.
- Product Development: Proven experience in conceptualizing, developing, and launching products, with an emphasis on learning from the process and understanding user acquisition strategies.
- Full-Stack Expertise: Proficiency in both Frontend (heavy emphasis on modern CSS techniques and frameworks) and Backend Python or (PHP, with a focus on Laravel) development.
- Startup Background: Experience in a startup environment is highly desirable.
- Continuous Learning: Evidence of staying current with emerging technologies and industry trends.
- User Feedback Integration: Experience working directly with customers to gather feedback and iterate on product features.
Leadership & Team Management:
- Proven track record of leading and mentoring small engineering teams.
- Experience in recruiting and growing engineering talent.
- Ability to make technical decisions and influence product strategy in collaboration with non-technical leadership.
- Capability to provide clear and actionable insights to the CEO.
Challenges & Constraints:
- Working within the resource limitations typical of a startup environment.
- Balancing rapid development with maintaining product quality and scalability.
- Adapting to potential rapid pivots or changes based on market feedback.
- Collaborating closely with a CEO new to software product development.
Growth Opportunities:
- Potential to evolve into a CTO or Head of Product Engineering role as the company grows.
- Opportunity to build and lead a larger engineering organization.
- Chance to make a significant impact on the product’s direction and the company’s success.
Why Join Us?
- Shape the Future: Play a pivotal role in developing a groundbreaking AI product from the ground up.
- Autonomy: Enjoy a high degree of independence and influence over the product’s direction.
- Build and Lead: Have the chance to create and lead a high-performing engineering team.
- Direct Impact: Work closely with the CEO and contribute significantly to the company’s success.
- Growth Potential: Opportunity for equity and career growth as the company scales.