Engineering Manager / Hands-On Technical Lead

Location: On-site – Valencia Town, Lahore

Job Timing : 1:00 PM – 10:00 PM (PKT)

About TechSea

TechSea is the leading AI-powered career services suite helping higher education institutions in the US prepare students for career success. We partner with colleges and universities in the US to scale modern career support across campuses—helping students with resume builders, AI resume review, cover letter generation, job search, interview preparation, CRM automation, campaign systems, data pipelines, integrations, and AI-driven workflows.

About the Role

We are looking for an Engineering Manager who is not just a manager. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who is equally comfortable leading a team and writing production code. You will work closely with the CTO to own engineering execution, drive architecture decisions, mentor developers, and personally build critical parts of the system from idea to production.

The ideal candidate brings deep, hands-on experience across:

• Node.js, React, MongoDB, Python, microservices, and distributed systems
• DevOps, Kubernetes, Helm, CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure
• AI workflows, LLM integrations, and production AI systems

What makes this role unique:

• You will personally own and build important projects — not only assign and supervise them.
• You will lead engineers and earn their respect technically.
• You will convert vague product ideas into clear, executable technical plans.
• You will manage multiple projects simultaneously with clarity, speed, and quality.

This is a high-ownership, high-efficiency role for someone who loves to build, lead, mentor, research, debug, and ship.

Key Responsibilities

1. Hands-On Technical Leadership & Project Ownership

• Personally own and build critical engineering projects from idea to production.
• Work directly on system architecture, backend services, frontend implementation, DevOps workflows, database design, APIs, workers, and AI integrations.
• Write, review, debug, and improve production code across Node.js, React, MongoDB, Python, Redis, OpenSearch, Kubernetes, Helm, CI/CD, and AI/LLM workflows.
• Build prototypes, proofs-of-concept, automation workflows, and production features.
• Lead by execution, not just delegation — jump into difficult problems and solve them.

2.Architecture & Technical Direction

• Lead technical direction across TechSea's full-stack SaaS products.
• Design, review, and improve architecture for microservices, APIs, background workers, queues, databases, AI systems, and DevOps workflows.
• Guide the team on system design, database structure, API design, performance, scalability, security, and maintainability.
• Define engineering standards for code quality, testing, documentation, observability, and production readiness.
• Review architecture proposals, technical plans, database schemas, and deployment strategies.

3. DevOps, Infrastructure & Production Ownership

• Lead and continuously improve DevOps practices across engineering.
• Work with Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Rancher, GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, secrets management, ingress, load balancers, monitoring, and logging.
• Help the team deploy safely, debug production issues, and improve reliability.
• Support multi-environment workflows — development, staging, and production.
• Guide engineers to treat infrastructure as an integral part of product engineering.

4. AI, Research & Modern Engineering Workflows

• Research and evaluate new AI tools, LLM workflows, inference options, prompt strategies, AI APIs, and automation approaches.
• Help the team use AI tools for coding, debugging, documentation, QA, prototyping, architecture research, and productivity improvement.

Tools and concepts you should know or be able to learn quickly:

• OpenAI APIs, Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot
• LLM-based workflows, prompt engineering, structured AI outputs, AI agents
• Python-based AI services, vLLM or similar inference servers
• Model deployment concepts, GPU-based inference basics, batch processing

5. Project Leadership & Delivery Execution

• Own engineering execution across multiple concurrent projects.
• Work with Product Managers, Designers, QA, Operations, and the CTO to convert product ideas into technical plans.
• Break large projects into milestones, tasks, owners, timelines, risks, and release plans.
• Track progress, identify blockers early, and communicate proactively with leadership.
• Balance speed with quality — push for delivery without compromising technical integrity.

6. Team Management & Developer Performance

• Lead, mentor, and grow the engineering team.
• Set clear expectations, assign work properly, review performance, and hold engineers accountable.
• Identify when someone is stuck, needs mentorship, is underperforming, or is ready for more responsibility.
• Build a culture of ownership, speed, quality, continuous learning, and accountability.
• Lead people firmly and respectfully — with both technical judgment and emotional intelligence.

7. Cross-Functional Communication

• Bridge engineering, product, design, QA, operations, and leadership.
• Help non-technical teams understand technical trade-offs; help technical teams understand business priorities.
• Participate in product discovery, roadmap planning, sprint planning, technical reviews, and release discussions.
• Communicate risks early and ensure engineering stays aligned with company goals and product direction.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience.
• 2+ years in a technical leadership role — Engineering Manager, Technical Lead, Team Lead, Architect, or Senior Engineering Lead.
• Strong hands-on experience with Node.js and backend development.
• Strong experience with React.js and frontend engineering.
• Strong experience with MongoDB and practical database design.
• Experience with Python for scripting, automation, backend services, data processing, or AI workflows.
• Strong understanding of microservices, APIs, background workers, queues, caching, and distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with Docker and CI/CD.
• Strong understanding of Kubernetes-based deployments.
• Experience with Helm charts, Kubernetes manifests, deployment workflows, or production DevOps systems.
• Experience managing engineers, reviewing work, mentoring developers, and improving team performance.
• Ability to lead architecture discussions and challenge technical decisions constructively.
• Ability to personally build, debug, and ship important parts of a system when needed.
• Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities simultaneously.
• Strong debugging skills across frontend, backend, database, infrastructure, and production systems.
• Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-moving startup environment where requirements evolve quickly.
• Strong research mindset and ability to learn new technologies quickly.
• Practical understanding of AI tools and modern AI-assisted engineering workflows.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• Experience working in a SaaS or fast-moving product company.
• Experience managing senior engineers, QA engineers, frontend, and backend developers.
• Experience building or scaling multi-tenant SaaS platforms.
• Experience with higher education technology, HR tech, career platforms, CRM systems, or job platforms.
• Experience with AI products, LLM integrations, AI agents, or AI-powered SaaS workflows.
• Experience with vLLM, GPU inference, model serving, or production AI model deployment.
• Experience with OpenAI, Claude, AWS Bedrock, LangChain, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot.
• Experience with RabbitMQ, BullMQ, Redis queues, or other event-driven systems.
• Experience with OpenSearch / Elasticsearch for search-heavy applications.
• Experience with monitoring tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, or Sentry.
• Experience hiring, interviewing, and growing engineering teams in Pakistan's software market.
• Experience improving engineering processes, team operating systems, and delivery culture.

Projects You May Lead and Build

You may lead, architect, and directly contribute to projects such as:

• AI resume review, resume builder, and advanced AI-powered rewrite workflows.
• Cover letter generation and job-based personalization systems.
• Interview preparation, mock interview, and question bank platforms.
• Job board search, ingestion, parsing, classification, and matching pipelines.
• High-volume data pipelines and background processing infrastructure.
• CRM automation and event-driven campaign workflows.
• Voice AI and call campaign infrastructure.
• Multi-tenant, school-specific platforms and white-label systems.
• SSO, authentication, authorization, and user access workflows.
• Admin dashboards, analytics, reporting, and customer-facing tools.
• AI model inference, batch processing, API orchestration, and automation systems.

Who Will Succeed in This Role

You will thrive here if you are:

• A technical leader who still loves engineering.
• A builder who wants to personally create products, not just manage people.
• An architect who understands trade-offs, scalability, and production reality.
• A researcher who can figure things out without waiting for perfect instructions.
• A mentor who helps developers grow and holds them accountable.
• A strong communicator who can handle difficult technical and people conversations.
• An AI power user who leverages modern tools to move faster.
• A calm decision-maker who thinks deeply but acts quickly.
• Someone who can carry multiple projects in their head and keep the team moving.

Who This Role Is Not For

• Someone who has moved completely away from hands-on engineering.
• Someone who only wants to attend meetings, create tickets, and follow up on status.
• Someone who talks about architecture but cannot build real systems.
• Someone who waits for the CTO to make every architecture decision.
• Someone uncomfortable with DevOps, debugging, infrastructure, or production issues.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field is preferred.
• Equivalent hands-on experience, strong leadership history, and proven technical ability are also acceptable.