Lead Engineer - AI-Native Email App

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Lead Engineer - AI-Native Email App based in United States. This is a hands-on technical leadership opportunity for an engineer who wants to shape complex products and systems from architecture through production. You will take ownership of major engineering initiatives while remaining deeply involved in coding, prototyping, debugging, and technical decision-making. The role spans scalable systems, APIs, databases, infrastructure, reliability, and modern AI-enabled products. You will work closely with engineering, product, design, and AI teams in a fast-moving, globally distributed environment. Beyond delivering features, you will help establish stronger engineering practices, improve team velocity, and raise the technical bar. This role is ideal for a pragmatic technical leader who combines strong engineering depth with product awareness and a bias toward ownership. Lead the technical design and execution of major products, features, and engineering initiatives from concept through production. Design scalable, reliable, maintainable systems across backend and frontend applications, APIs, databases, and cloud infrastructure. Remain hands-on through coding, prototyping, debugging, code reviews, and production problem-solving. Make architecture and technical trade-off decisions that balance speed, scalability, reliability, security, and long-term maintainability. Break ambiguous product and engineering challenges into clear solutions, technical designs, and practical execution plans. Establish high standards for code quality, system design, testing, security, observability, and production reliability. Review technical designs and code, providing actionable feedback that improves engineering quality across the team. Mentor engineers and strengthen technical capabilities through guidance, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Identify technical risks, bottlenecks, and architectural weaknesses early and drive solutions before they become larger problems. Partner with engineering, product, design, and AI teams to deliver high-quality products efficiently. Improve engineering tooling, development practices, automation, and workflows to increase team velocity. Take ownership of systems after release by monitoring production, investigating incidents, resolving root causes, and continuously improving reliability. Requirements Significant professional software engineering experience with a strong track record of building and shipping production systems. Deep technical expertise in one or more areas such as backend engineering, frontend development, distributed systems, APIs, databases, or cloud infrastructure. Strong system design and architecture capabilities, including experience making technical decisions for complex or high-scale systems. Strong coding skills and a genuine willingness to remain hands-on in a technical leadership position. Demonstrated experience leading major engineering projects or providing technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers. Experience reviewing code, debugging complex issues, and working directly with production systems. Ability to explain complex technical concepts and architectural decisions clearly and influence stakeholders across teams. Strong product sense, with the ability to connect technical choices to customer needs and business outcomes. Comfortable working with ambiguity, defining problems independently, and taking ownership from initial concept through production. Strong judgment regarding when to move quickly, simplify a solution, or invest more deeply in engineering quality. Ability to work effectively within a distributed, international team across multiple locations and time zones. Strong English communication skills, both written and verbal. Candidates should be able to demonstrate meaningful technical achievements, including products or systems th