Engineering Team Lead

About Us

Latent AI is a leading AI solutions implementation partner, dedicated to helping our diverse clients solve their most complex challenges with cutting-edge technology. Our strength lies in our small, agile, and expert teams who deliver bespoke AI and machine learning solutions. We foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and deep technical excellence. As we grow, we are seeking a leader who is passionate about nurturing the talented individuals at the heart of our success.

The Role

We are looking for an Engineering Team Lead - a true player-coach who can balance strategic leadership with technical excellence.

This is a critical leadership role for a seasoned technical professional who thrives at the intersection of management and execution. While your primary focus will be leading, planning, and empowering your team, you will also remain deeply involved in the technical details - guiding architecture, reviewing code, and stepping in to solve complex problems when needed.

You will lead and mentor a small, senior team of AI Engineers (3 engineers), serve as the key technical partner for our US-based client, and translate their business goals into a high-performing, secure, and scalable platform.

What You’ll Do

Leadership & Strategy

• Team Leadership & Mentorship: Lead, mentor, and unblock your team of 3 senior engineers. You will be responsible for setting the technical tone, fostering a strong engineering culture, conducting high-quality code reviews, and helping your team members grow.
• Project & Delivery Management: You will be responsible for the team's project delivery. This includes translating the roadmap into actionable tasks, proactively organizing and assigning work, monitoring its completion, and ensuring timely delivery from your team.
• Architectural Ownership: Own the complete technical architecture of our Next.js/Node.js/Python platform. You will make the critical decisions, including the high-level design of our scalable data processing pipelines and external API strategy, evaluating trade-offs (e.g., speed vs. scalability, build vs. buy) to ensure we're building a resilient and future-proof system.
• Business Acumen: Possess strong business acumen, with the ability to connect technical decisions directly to business outcomes and priorities. You must understand the "why" behind every feature.
• Stakeholder & Client Communication: Act as the primary technical partner for our US-based client, liaising directly with a 3-person client-side team and you will be involved in defining and prioritizing tasks. You must be able to clearly articulate complex technical concepts, manage expectations, and confidently present your team's decisions.

Hands-On Technical Expertise

• Core Stack Mastery: Expert-level, hands-on ability with Next.js and TypeScript. You must be able to step in, write production-grade code, and solve the team's most complex challenges when required.
• Full-Stack Context: A strong grasp of the entire system, including the backend data-processing services (Python) and databases (PostgreSQL), to effectively guide architectural decisions for the whole platform.
• DevOps & CI/CD: Solid experience with DevOps principles and CI/CD pipelines. You must understand how to maintain and improve a fast, reliable, and automated path from code to production.
• Platform Security: A non-negotiable, deep understanding of application security and data protection best practices. You will be the primary advocate for platform security.
• Observability: Experience implementing or managing observability tools (e.g., logging, monitoring, tracing) to understand system health, debug issues, and ensure high availability.
• Technical Quality & Testing: A strong understanding of modern testing strategies (unit, integration, e2e) and a commitment to shipping high-quality, well-tested code.

Core Attributes

• Exceptional Communication: Non-negotiable, fluent English for high-level client management, stakeholder updates, and clear team leadership
• Proactive Ownership: A deep sense of accountability for your team, the product's quality, and its timely delivery. You own the outcomes.
• Decisiveness & Problem Solving: The ability to make well-reasoned decisions to keep the team unblocked and the project moving forward, even when dealing with ambiguity.
• A "Player-Coach" Mentality: You lead from the front, setting a high bar for quality and culture, and are genuinely invested in mentoring your team members.

Who You Are

• Experienced Leader: 10+ years in software engineering, including at least 4 years in a hands-on management or tech lead role.
• Technical Expert: Deep, hands-on experience with Next.js, TypeScript, and full-stack systems.
• Strong Communicator: Fluent in English, with exceptional ability to communicate complex technical ideas clearly and confidently to both engineers and clients.
• Business-Minded Engineer: You understand the “why” behind the code - connecting technical priorities directly to business outcomes.
• Decisive & Accountable: You take ownership of outcomes, make informed decisions under ambiguity, and keep teams moving forward.
• Player-Coach: You lead by example - setting the technical and cultural tone, staying hands-on when it matters, and empowering others to excel.

Bonus Points

• Experience in a consulting or professional services environment.
• Prior exposure to AI, ML, or data-driven platforms.
• Familiarity with distributed teams and cross-timezone collaboration.

Why Join Us?

This is a unique opportunity to shape the engineering culture at a growing AI services company. You'll have a direct impact on the careers of our talented engineers and play a pivotal role in our ability to deliver world-class solutions to our clients. If you are a leader who believes that great technology is built by happy, empowered, and supported people, we would love to hear from you.