Lead Platform Engineer

About the Role
  
Our Client is seeking a Lead Platform Engineer to take a key technical leadership role within a growing engineering organization. This individual will be a hands-on engineer responsible for designing and building complex systems while helping establish the technical standards, architecture, and engineering practices that support continued growth.
The role combines high-level technical ownership with hands-on development and team leadership. The successful candidate will work closely with engineering leadership, contribute to technology strategy, and help shape how modern AI-assisted development practices are used across the engineering function.
  
Key Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and build scalable backend systems and APIs from initial concept through production.
• Develop and maintain distributed, service-oriented, and event-driven architectures.
• Lead a small engineering team, providing technical direction, code reviews, mentorship, and accountability for delivery.
• Establish engineering standards and best practices across architecture, development, testing, and deployment.
• Help define and advance the use of AI-assisted engineering tools and development workflows.
• Partner with engineering leadership on technical strategy, architecture, priorities, and technology decisions.
• Ensure systems remain secure, reliable, maintainable, and performant as the platform scales.
• Work closely with product teams to understand business requirements and translate them into effective technical solutions.
• Remain highly hands-on, taking ownership of technically challenging projects and contributing directly to the codebase.

Requirements

• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, ideally within SaaS, AI, automation, or another high-growth technology environment.
• Strong academic or equivalent technical background in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related discipline.
• Experience operating as a Lead Engineer, Technical Lead, or senior engineer with significant architectural and technical ownership.
• Deep expertise in modern backend development, API design, distributed systems, and service-based architectures.
• Strong experience with JavaScript/TypeScript-based backend technologies or comparable modern development frameworks.
• Practical experience using AI technologies and AI-assisted development tools within production engineering environments.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, system scalability, performance, security, and engineering best practices.
• Experience working within a startup, scale-up, or other fast-moving engineering environment with significant individual ownership.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, mentor, and raise the technical standards of other engineers while remaining highly hands-on.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills, with the ability to operate effectively in an evolving technical environment.