Technical Lead, Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Required, Work From Home

Next Step Systems•San Francisco, CA

3d•$180,000 - $200,000•Remote

About The Position

As the Technical Lead, Applications, you directly own the core application architecture that connects AI systems to real-world user experiences. You will be responsible for the design, reliability, and evolution of backend services, APIs, and client integrations across mobile and desktop. This is a hands-on leadership role. You will stay close to the code, make critical architectural decisions, and ensure the system remains fast, reliable, and coherent as it scales. This position is 100% Remote.

Requirements

Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) experience required.
Strong hands-on background building and shipping backend systems used in production.
Experience delivering Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered products, with a deep understanding of model integration trade-offs.
Excellent system design skills across services, APIs, clients, and data flows.
Comfort operating across platforms (backend, mobile, desktop), even if your depth is in one.
Proven ability to make high-impact technical decisions under ambiguity.
A strong bias toward shipping, iteration, and learning from real-world usage.
Move fast without breaking fundamentals.

Responsibilities

Own the application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile, and desktop.
Lead and grow a small, senior applications team, including backend, mobile, and desktop engineers.
Ensure production-grade reliability: observability, monitoring, retries, fallbacks, and failure handling.
Set the architectural direction for AI-powered product workflows, APIs, and client integrations.
Ensure AI capabilities are integrated into the product with clear abstractions, predictable behavior, and graceful failure modes.
Partner closely with Machine Learning (ML) leadership to translate model capability into shippable product features.
Make high-impact decisions across latency, cost, reliability, security, and user experience.
Establish a strong execution culture through code reviews, design reviews, and hands-on technical leadership.
Ensure production readiness: observability, monitoring, retries, fallbacks, privacy, and cost controls.
Balance speed and discipline, shipping quickly without compromising long-term system quality.