Senior/Staff Software Engineer - Tech Lead

Accountabilities

• Lead the end-to-end technical architecture of the engineering squad, aligning system design, development, and deployment across the technology stack to deliver reliable solutions and evolve the product roadmap.

• Drive production readiness by implementing robust deployment monitoring, error handling, graceful degradation mechanisms, and operational runbooks.

• Establish and promote engineering best practices, including modular system design, security, reliability, scalability, code quality, testing, and production delivery standards.

• Provide hands-on technical leadership through individual development contributions, architectural guidance, code reviews, and collaborative problem-solving.

• Mentor and support engineers, strengthening their technical capabilities, encouraging knowledge sharing, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

• Contribute to the organization's broader technology strategy by reviewing architectural decisions, identifying opportunities for reusable components, and defining standard interfaces that minimize dependencies between systems.

• Collaborate with product leadership to develop and execute realistic technical roadmaps that balance business priorities, available resources, scalability, and architectural requirements.

• Take ownership of quarterly engineering objectives, ensuring consistent delivery of high-impact initiatives while managing team capacity and priorities effectively.

• Oversee team performance, productivity, delivery timelines, and morale by aligning responsibilities with individual strengths, development goals, and project requirements.

• Introduce and improve engineering tools, workflows, processes, and methodologies to support efficient, high-quality software development.

• Produce clear technical documentation and establish processes that facilitate knowledge transfer, asynchronous collaboration, and long-term maintainability.

Requirements:

• At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record of personally building, deploying, and operating production systems at meaningful scale.

• Hands-on experience developing production software using AI coding agents such as Claude Code or Cursor, along with the ability to guide teams in adopting and managing agent-assisted development workflows.

• Advanced proficiency in Python 3.12 or later, including experience with FastAPI services, asynchronous orchestration of concurrent model calls, typed SDK design and packaging, parsers, Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs), and Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) execution.

• Strong experience designing distributed systems and APIs, particularly interfaces that evolve and serve multiple independent teams or services.

• Demonstrated technical leadership experience, including introducing engineering quality practices such as code reviews, testing, and CI/CD processes.

• Previous experience mentoring or managing at least two engineers, with direct management responsibility not required.

• Strong architectural judgment and the ability to make sound technical decisions, prioritize effectively, and balance long-term scalability with immediate delivery needs.

• Comfortable working in ambiguous environments with limited resources, taking ownership of technical outcomes, and remaining accountable for production releases, system reliability, and incident resolution.

• Excellent written communication skills and strong asynchronous collaboration capabilities, with experience building trusted working relationships across geographically distributed teams and time zones.

• Proven ability to collaborate cross-functionally and communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both engineering and non-technical stakeholders.

• Practical experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and information retrieval, including vector databases, retrieval pipelines, embedding strategies, and aggregation techniques, would be a strong advantage.

• Familiarity with Vue 3, TypeScript, Rust, Tauri, or cross-platform desktop application development would be highly beneficial.

• Experience with networking and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications would be considered an additional asset.

• Ability to work as an independent contractor with substantial overlap with US Eastern business hours. Candidates should be located within approximately one hour of the Eastern Time Zone.

Benefits:

• Competitive compensation: Annualized contract fee ranging from USD $126,000 to $188,000, invoiced monthly. Final compensation will depend on experience, technical expertise, seniority, and location.

• Mission-driven opportunity: Contribute to technology initiatives focused on social impact, privacy protection, and responsible AI innovation within a nonprofit environment.

• Open-source impact: Help develop and improve open-source technologies that benefit researchers, developers, institutions, and the wider global community.

• Global collaboration: Work alongside an international, diverse, and highly collaborative team of professionals passionate about AI, security, and privacy.

• Flexible working hours: Enjoy autonomy in organizing your schedule and structuring your work around your productivity and personal commitments, while maintaining substantial overlap with US Eastern business hours.

• Fully remote work: Work remotely from Canada, with the flexibility and independence of a distributed working environment.

• Long-term engagement: Initial 12-month independent contractor agreement, with an anticipated renewal.

• Professional growth: Strengthen your technical leadership experience while working on complex distributed systems, emerging AI technologies, and impactful open-source projects.