Lead Engineer (Technical Owner) – Full Stack

Your mission

Role Overview

This is a senior individual contributor role designed for someone who wants to grow into broader technical leadership. You will have meaningful ownership from day one.

The team is deeply AI-forward. You will be provided with a Claude Code Pro account ($200/mo) and are expected to actively leverage AI-assisted workflows to maximize development velocity and decision-making.

What you will work on (First 3 Months)

Zero-to-One Initiatives

• Studio Partnership Program: Architect and ship the core MVP for this greenfield product.
• Lead the end-to-end implementation including backend, analytics, and reliable instrumentation.
• Sequence milestones to ensure the system is maintainable and ready for rapid post-launch iteration.

In-house Architecture Roadmap

• Headless Platform Migration: Lead the transition from a legacy template-based hosting setup to a decoupled, in-house frontend.
• Build the API integration layer between our existing backend infrastructure and our custom stack to unlock UI flexibility and performance.
• Standardize event tracking and attribution across the ecosystem to ensure data-grounded product decisions.

Technical Operating Cadence

• Establish a high-velocity release workflow using GitHub and environment-specific deployments.
• Implement a triage rhythm and a 'single source of truth' for technical priorities.
• Build out observability and reliability standards to eliminate 'flying blind' during shipments.

Stack Context

You will manage and evolve a modern, decoupled architecture:

• AWS: Primary cloud infrastructure.
• GitHub: Version control, CI/CD, and environment management.
• Video Platform (Headless): Video and tutorial hosting via API.
• Shopify: Commerce and storefront management.
• Analytics: GA4, custom event tracking, and attribution dashboards.

What you will own

• Own technical planning and delivery across product initiatives (scope, sequence, tradeoffs, timelines).
• Triage, prioritize, and resolve incoming technical issues with a calm, structured approach.
• Partner with product/design to shape solutions that are maintainable and measurable.
• Lead the buildout of new product initiatives (including standalone feature areas with backend + analytics).
• Reduce legacy dependency and establish a clear path to a transition to custom solution.
• Maintain and extend cloud infrastructure (AWS), including reliability, cost awareness, and performance.
• Manage and improve deployment pipelines and workflows using GitHub (PR hygiene, environments, releases).
• Set sensible engineering standards (logging, monitoring, testing expectations, documentation).
• Improve analytics instrumentation.
• Support and unblock other teams with clear technical communication (without becoming a helpdesk).

Your profile

We're looking for someone who can operate as the senior technical owner of a small but ambitious company. The most important competencies are:

• Strong judgment on what to build vs. what to avoid.
• Ability to turn ambiguous goals into clear technical plans.
• Architectural ownership and leadership.
• Comfort making decisions, documenting them, and aligning stakeholders.
• Ability to lead execution while keeping the system stable and understandable.

Execution capability (hands-on)

• You can implement key pieces yourself when needed.
• You keep momentum without sacrificing quality.
• You ship in iterations and don't get stuck in theoretical perfection.

Key Qualifications

• Proven experience owning and driving technical delivery in a startup or small team environment.
• Strong full-stack fundamentals and the ability to work across frontend, backend, and infrastructure.
• Strong JavaScript/TypeScript foundation and modern web development experience.
• Experience integrating third-party services and APIs.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and production operations.
• Strong GitHub workflow competence (branches, PRs, code reviews, CI/CD).
• Strong communication skills in English (German is a plus).

Nice-to-have Skills

• Experience with templated/theme-based web platforms and migrations away from legacy customizations.
• Experience with Shopify ecosystems and commerce integrations.
• Familiarity with analytics tooling (GA, event tracking, product analytics, dashboards).
• Experience introducing lightweight incident response routines (on-call not required, but discipline is).

Working style & collaboration

You'll work closely with the CEO and the Content leadership. The expectation is that you become the person who brings clarity and forward motion:

• 'Here's what we'll do, what we won't do, and why.'
• 'Here are the risks and how we de-risk them.'
• 'Here's the plan and what we need from each function.'

Why us?

• High ownership and real leverage on product direction.
• A mission-driven, international team.
• A product with real users and strong brand pull.
• Flexible working hours and pragmatic startup culture.
• Room to shape the technical org and future hiring plan.