About the Role

A fast-growing, seed-stage voice AI company in San Francisco is looking for a Tech Lead to step in as a CTO-like engineering leader. You'll own day-to-day engineering operations, raise the technical bar across the team, and play a critical role in driving continued ARR growth — all while working hands-on in a high-intensity, in-person environment. This is an opportunity to join a small but formidable team building AI-powered voice and text agents that automate customer service and operational workflows for businesses at scale.

The company is backed by a top-tier accelerator and a strong group of investors, and operates in the rapidly expanding conversational AI / call center automation space.

What You'll Do

• Manage and lead a team of 4 engineers day-to-day — setting roadmaps, running 1:1s, and owning task prioritization

• Review code and architectural decisions, ensuring quality standards across speed, performance, and design

• Establish engineering best practices, processes, and project management cadences

• Act as a sparring partner to senior leadership and cross-functional teams (Sales, Customer Success)

• Contribute directly to the codebase (~20–30% of your time as an individual contributor)

What We're Looking For

Required

• 4–12 years of experience, including formal people management of a team of 4–10 engineers (not just leading side projects)

• Strong background as an individual contributor before moving into leadership

• Backend development fluency in Python and solid cloud engineering skills (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

• Demonstrated ability to evaluate code quality: architecture, performance, and technical trade-offs

• Hands-on experience designing and leading AI/ML systems at scale, preferably in cloud-based SaaS or startup environments

• Experience with conversational AI, voice technology, and/or NLP/LLM applications

• Proficiency deploying ML models in production on cloud platforms

• Strong communication skills and executive presence; comfortable advocating technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders

• Highly structured, proactive, and excellent at prioritization and project management

• Must have the right to work in the US — no visa sponsorship available

Nice to Have

• Prior experience at a conversational AI or voice AI company

• Management consulting background

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $240,000 – $260,000 USD annually

• Equity participation in a high-growth early-stage company

Location

• San Francisco, CA, United States

• This role is fully on-site, 5 days per week in San Francisco

• No visa sponsorship is available; candidates must have existing US work authorization