Head of Engineering

LTV•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

At LTV.ai, we’re redefining email marketing for e-commerce brands by automating a lot of the day-to-day manual grunt work that goes into email marketing, from segmentation, to creating campaigns without designers, to personalization. While increasing LTV and driving measurable growth, we help brands stay focused on what matters most – the customer. Why join us? We’re a fast-moving team building a high-growth company that’s transforming the e-commerce industry. As an early team member, you’ll play a key role in shaping both our product and the future of e-commerce, with the opportunity to grow alongside us. Recent wins Developed a segmentation engine that leverages e-commerce platform data to personalize interactions in a compliant manner, at scale (100M+ consumers and growing 40% MoM) Built out a data pipeline capable of handling millions of events daily Enabled the use of multiple LLMs for a single interaction, optimized for the best performance while reducing costs Onboarded some of the largest e-commerce brands across the industry (e.g. Backcountry, J. Jill, Fabletics, Sur La Table) turning them into massive believers in both our product and our vision We’d like to work on Refining our AI infrastructure to enable deeper segmentation, optimize customer-level memory, and integrate advanced agentic workflows for greater adaptability and efficiency Enhancing our AI conversation engine to deliver self-optimizing interactions that gather actionable feedback Expanding our image creation capabilities to provide our brands with a wider medium of emails to send, thus offsetting end brand costs and increasing product adoption

Requirements

8+ years of backend engineering experience with deep architectural ownership
Proven track record of building and scaling backend systems, preferably in fast-growing SaaS, messaging, or e-commerce environments
Comfortable working in TypeScript (NestJS) and AWS-based infrastructure
AI-first mindset – you instinctively reach for AI-native solutions when designing systems, products, and workflows
Deep experience with or interest in LLMOps, AI application infrastructure, and emerging tools that accelerate AI product development
Excitement about using AI coding tools to boost velocity (e.g. Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code)
A strong sense of engineering taste – you know when to build fast and when to build right, and you’re allergic to unnecessary complexity
Experience leading or mentoring small, high-performing engineering teams
Pragmatic and adaptable – someone who thrives wearing many hats and moves fast without sacrificing quality

Responsibilities

Serve as a hands-on engineering leader, dedicating ~70% of your time to IC-level contributions (coding, reviewing, debugging, shipping)
Architect and maintain scalable, reliable backend infrastructure capable of supporting rapid growth and real-time AI-powered communications
Validate and pressure-test architectural decisions across the stack – ensuring we build for scale without over-engineering
Unlock engineering velocity by removing blockers, improving developer tooling, streamlining CI/CD, and establishing lightweight processes that keep the team shipping fast
Enforce a high bar for code quality while keeping tech debt to near zero – you believe clean code and fast shipping are not at odds
Lead and mentor a growing team of engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, high ownership, and relentless iteration
Drive the technical roadmap in partnership with the founding team, balancing near-term product needs with long-term infrastructure bets
Design and implement core infrastructure that supports AI-native applications, including multi-agent workflows, model routing, and real-time feedback loops
Champion AI-first engineering practices across the org – ensuring we leverage AI coding tools, AI-native architectures, and emerging LLMOps patterns to stay ahead of the industry
Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, and data to prioritize and deliver high-impact features