About this role
Engineering Lead
Department: Engineering | Location: Palo Alto HQ | Type: Full-time, On-site
About the Role We're looking for an Engineering Lead to own a significant area of the Pika platform — leading a pod of engineers while staying deeply hands-on. You'll set technical direction, drive architecture decisions, ship critical features, and raise the bar for the team through mentorship and code review.
Our engineering team is early-stage and growing fast. We need someone who can combine strong individual contribution with the instincts to uplevel everyone around them. Expect to spend 50-60% of your time writing code and the rest leading, reviewing, and unblocking.
What You'll Do • Lead a team of 3-6 engineers — set priorities, unblock the team, run sprints, and ensure consistent delivery • Stay hands-on — you're writing code daily, owning major features, and making architecture decisions • Drive technical architecture — make system design decisions for your area, write RFCs, and build consensus across engineering • Raise the engineering bar — code reviews, architecture guidance, pair programming, and mentorship for the team • Own delivery — break down ambiguous product requirements into shippable milestones and hit deadlines • Collaborate cross-functionally — work with product, design, and research to align technical execution with product vision • Improve engineering processes — CI/CD, testing, on-call, incident response, and development workflows • Recruit and grow the team — participate in hiring, onboarding, and building a strong engineering culture
What We're Looking For • 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a tech lead or engineering lead role • Strong technical foundation — distributed systems, API design, database architecture, cloud infrastructure • Proven leadership — you've led teams, mentored engineers, and shipped products through ambiguity • Hands-on by choice — you lead from the codebase, not just from meetings • Experience with high-growth startups — you thrive in fast-moving environments where scope changes • Strong communication — you can articulate technical trade-offs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders • Proficiency in TypeScript/Node.js or Python • Experience with cloud infrastructure — AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines
Nice to Have • Experience with AI/LLM products or agent systems • Experience building real-time, multi-platform systems • Experience scaling teams from 5 to 20+ engineers • Previous founding or early-stage startup experience