Technical Lead

Sekai

9d•Remote

About The Position

Sekai is building the TikTok for mini apps — an AI-driven consumer platform where people create, remix, share, and play interactive content instantly. We are a Series A company backed by Khosla, a16z, Mayfield, and A, with $30M raised to date. We are remote-first across all positions and are looking for ambitious, AI-native builders who want to help shape the next generation of consumer social products. About the Role We are looking for a Technical Lead to drive technical execution across backend, frontend, mobile, AI, and data. This is not a traditional people-management role. You will act as a technical partner to the founders, product team, and engineering team — turning ambiguous product goals into clear technical plans, unblocking hard engineering problems, and helping us scale the technical team. Our current technical surface includes Python, Go, Next.js, React, React Native, Flutter, native iOS/Android, AI systems, data infrastructure, and recommendation systems. We do not expect deep expertise in every area. In the AI era, we believe strong engineering leaders should be able to use AI tools to quickly ramp up on new languages, frameworks, and codebases.

Requirements

5+ years of professional software engineering experience
Experience leading large-scope technical work across multiple engineers, teams, or product areas
Experience as a Technical Lead, Tech Lead, Engineering Lead, Head of Engineering, CTO, Staff Engineer, or hands-on Engineering Manager
Strong engineering fundamentals and technical judgment across multiple domains
Deep familiarity with AI tools and ability to use AI to augment technical execution and decision-making
Ability to operate under ambiguity and turn unclear goals into executable plans
Strong communication skills with founders, product managers, designers, and engineers
Startup-level ownership, urgency, and willingness to dive into details

Nice To Haves

Experience with agentic AI systems, LLM workflows, AI agents, or AI-assisted product creation
Experience with machine learning, recommendation systems, ranking, experimentation, or data pipelines
Experience building consumer-facing products, mobile products, social platforms, creator tools, or developer tools
Experience in a VC-backed startup or high-growth technology company
Experience hiring, interviewing, or defining technical bars for engineering roles

Responsibilities

Lead technical execution across backend, frontend, mobile, AI, and data initiatives
Translate ambiguous product goals into clear technical plans, milestones, owners, and trade-offs
Dive deep into hard technical problems and help drive them to resolution
Partner with founders, product, design, and engineering on technical decisions
Coordinate cross-domain engineering work and remove execution blockers
Raise the bar for engineering quality, speed, reliability, and maintainability
Help define hiring needs, role requirements, interview criteria, and technical evaluation standards
Build internal AI workflows and foster an AI-native engineering culture