Lead Engineer (Remote or Hybrid)

Optix

5h•$120,000 - $140,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Optix is seeking a Lead Engineer to guide our engineering team through the shift to an AI-first product and development culture—serving as both a hands-on builder and technical mentor. In this role, you'll split your time between building the Optix platform, establishing the technical foundation for the future of our product, and setting good team practices. You'll make architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and partner directly with our CEO to translate product vision into technical reality. You’ll collaborate directly with the leadership team to ensure Optix not only builds world-class AI capabilities but also does so with a sustainable, scalable engineering culture where AI-first thinking becomes second nature. This is a unique opportunity to shape transformation in a profitable SaaS company as we evolve from a rules-based automation platform into a conversational, agentic workspace management system. This role is open to candidates Remote, across Canada. If you’re local to Vancouver, the team works out of our beautiful Gastown office 3 days per week.

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience
Strong full-stack engineering fundamentals
Proven experience at a SaaS company, navigating ambiguity and establishing AI best practices
You’ve developed AI-based software
Hands-on experience with AI APIs, prompt engineering, RAG implementation, and evaluation frameworks
Experience mentoring engineers and driving adoption of new technical practices across a team
Demonstrated ability to make architectural decisions that balance innovation with pragmatism
You can clearly articulate when not to use AI and how to evaluate whether AI features are actually working

Nice To Haves

Experience leading the cultural shift to AI-first development practices within an existing team
Knowledge of AI frameworks like LangChain, Pydantic, LlamaIndex for building reliable AI features
Experience with model evaluation, A/B testing, performance monitoring, and quality assurance for AI features
Experience with PHP/Laravel and MySQL
Data engineering background: ETL pipelines, vector databases, embedding management
Deployment expertise: Containerization, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), monitoring AI systems in production
Prior experience in B2B SaaS platforms serving enterprise customers

Responsibilities

Partner with our CEO to translate business objectives into technical solutions and architectural decisions
Mentor our engineering team, building their technical and AI capabilities
Evolve engineering practices, including adopting AI-first development
Own the architecture and long term technical vision for the Optix platform, develop and execute a plan to achieve it
Architect scalable AI systems that integrate seamlessly with our existing automations platform
Guide technical decisions on model selection, integration patterns, and system architecture
Establish evaluation frameworks and quality standards for AI feature development
Design and build features in the Optix platform.
Work with Customer Success and Technical Support teams to resolve customer issues, and develop the system to reduce future ticket volume
Implement monitoring and evaluation infrastructure to continuously improve feature performance
Identify opportunities to leverage AI across our platform for maximum customer impact

Benefits

Competitive salary compensation of $120,000 - $140,000
Strong Employee Stock Option Plan offering
Excellent health and dental coverage program provided by Sunlife
Mission-driven workplace experience with a positive, collaborative and supportive team culture
Personal and professional growth opportunities
Healthy snacks and locally roasted coffee – slow pour is our jam
Team lunches and socials
Annual health and fitness credit
Fun offsite activities that allow us to reconnect as a team
A beautiful, waterfront Gastown office and a flexible 60/40 hybrid workplace plan for local candidates