Head of Engineering

Head of Engineering

Position Type: Full-Time, Remote

Working Hours: U.S. Business Hours

Location: Remote (Pakistan, LATAM, Eastern Europe Preferred)

About the Role

We are hiring a highly technical and hands-on Head of Engineering to own the entire engineering function of a fast-growing SaaS platform. This role combines deep backend engineering, distributed systems architecture, AI infrastructure, and technical leadership in a fast-moving startup environment.

This is not a purely managerial role. You will actively write production code, make architectural decisions, oversee infrastructure reliability, and guide a lean engineering team while helping scale a platform operating across multiple services and AI-powered workflows.

The ideal candidate thrives in startup environments, takes ownership of systems end-to-end, and understands how to balance rapid product development with long-term scalability and reliability.

What You’ll Own

Backend Architecture & Engineering

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend systems using .NET 8.0, C#, ASP.NET Core, and Entity Framework Core
• Own system architecture across 14+ independently deployed microservices
• Implement Clean Architecture and Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles
• Deliver new product features, optimize existing systems, and resolve performance bottlenecks
• Improve system scalability, maintainability, and engineering standards across the codebase

AI Systems & LLM Infrastructure

• Design and manage production-grade AI and LLM pipelines across multiple providers
• Build scalable workflows for personalization, segmentation, automation, and AI-assisted features
• Optimize prompts, orchestration logic, failover systems, and provider routing strategies
• Monitor token usage, rate limits, latency, and cost efficiency across AI systems
• Integrate AI-assisted development workflows and tooling into engineering operations

Databases & Data Infrastructure

• Manage and optimize MySQL, Redis, and MongoDB production environments
• Oversee caching strategies, analytics pipelines, event-driven systems, and bulk data operations
• Ensure strong performance, reliability, and data consistency across distributed services
• Improve database architecture, indexing, and query performance

Infrastructure, DevOps & Reliability

• Own Linux-based infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, deployments, and operational reliability
• Implement centralized monitoring, observability, alerting, and logging systems
• Proactively identify scalability, reliability, and performance risks before they impact users
• Maintain high platform uptime and deployment stability across environments

API Integrations & System Resilience

• Manage and maintain 25+ third-party API integrations in production
• Design retry logic, graceful degradation systems, fallback strategies, and provider failover handling
• Ensure platform stability during outages, API failures, or degraded external services
• Improve resilience and fault tolerance across all external dependencies

Team Leadership & Engineering Standards

• Lead and mentor a small engineering team through code reviews, architecture guidance, and technical feedback
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices, workflows, documentation standards, and deployment processes
• Collaborate directly with leadership and founders on product direction and technical roadmap planning
• Create a culture of ownership, execution quality, and engineering excellence

What Makes You a Great Fit

• Senior-level engineer comfortable owning systems end-to-end
• Strong architectural thinker who still enjoys hands-on coding daily
• Calm under pressure and highly capable in fast-moving startup environments
• Deeply analytical with strong problem-solving instincts
• Strong communicator capable of aligning engineering decisions with business goals
• Passionate about scalability, reliability, AI systems, and engineering excellence

Required Experience & Skills

• Deep expertise in .NET 8.0, C#, ASP.NET Core, and Entity Framework Core
• Strong experience designing distributed systems and microservice architectures
• Production experience with MySQL, Redis, MongoDB, and event-driven systems
• Hands-on DevOps experience with Linux infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines
• Experience managing large-scale API integrations and distributed workflows
• Proven experience building and operating AI/LLM systems in production environments
• Strong understanding of monitoring, observability, scalability, and reliability engineering
• Experience leading small engineering teams and mentoring developers
• Strong English communication skills

Preferred Experience

• Startup or high-growth SaaS experience
• Experience scaling AI-powered platforms or automation systems
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, or infrastructure-as-code tooling
• Experience optimizing AI cost efficiency and inference performance
• Knowledge of event streaming, asynchronous processing, and high-throughput architectures
• Familiarity with AI-assisted software development workflows

What a Typical Day Looks Like

A Head of Engineering’s day revolves around balancing architecture, execution, reliability, and leadership. You will

• Write and review production backend code
• Make architectural decisions across services, infrastructure, and AI systems
• Monitor production systems and resolve scalability or reliability issues
• Guide developers through code reviews and technical implementation decisions
• Collaborate with leadership on roadmap planning and technical prioritization
• Improve deployment reliability, observability, and engineering workflows
• Optimize AI systems for performance, stability, and cost efficiency

In essence: you own the technical foundation of the platform and ensure the engineering organization can scale reliably while moving quickly.

Key Metrics for Success (KPIs)

• System uptime and platform reliability
• AI pipeline stability and operational efficiency
• Deployment reliability and engineering velocity
• Backend performance and scalability improvements
• Code quality and reduction in technical debt
• Team delivery consistency and engineering execution quality
• Infrastructure stability and incident reduction

Interview Process

• Initial Screening Call
• Technical Interview with Pavago Recruiter
• Technical / Architecture Interview with Client
• Final Leadership Interview
• Offer & Onboarding

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