Why this role exists

Picky has 4 engineers and no internal technical authority. Cost decisions, architecture decisions, and deployment decisions are happening without anyone formally responsible. This role fixes that.

This is the technical floor of the company: infrastructure ownership, deployment discipline, architecture standards, and the prototype-vs-production gate. The Head of Tech sets direction and pace; the Tech Lead makes sure what ships is sound, costed, and aligned across the codebase.

What the role owns

Infrastructure authority — cost monitoring, deployment sign-off, third-party integration approval, infrastructure-as-code (Pulumi/Terraform) for production systems.
Prototype-vs-production gate — define and enforce the boundary. Free prototype environment any engineer can use without approval. Cost or production thresholds above which Tech Lead sign-off is required.
Architecture & technical standards — review architecture decisions, catch data-integrity drift early (back-office ↔ Java backend inconsistencies, materialized-view staleness), keep PR review meaningful beyond syntax.
AI-assisted engineering practices — set the tooling baseline (Claude Code, agents, eval flow). One shared workflow across the team, not six personal experiments.
Technical mentorship — supports each engineer technically. Direction and people-management sit with the Head of Tech.

What we're looking for

Must-haves

5+ years engineering experience with deep backend or systems work. Track record of carrying production responsibility solo.
AI-native — uses AI tooling daily, has opinions on what works, has shipped real features with AI in the loop.
Infrastructure depth — comfortable owning AWS/GCP, IaC, cost monitoring, CI/CD. Can articulate build-vs-buy trade-offs in numbers.
Composure under pressure. This team has accumulated frustration. The role demands disagreeing in writing, not in outbursts. (See Behavioral contract.)
On-site in Seoul.

Strong pluses

Led an architectural refactor that materially reduced complexity
Authored build-vs-buy memos — proof of cost-led thinking, not preference-led

Not required

Direct people-management experience — mentoring yes, headcount no
Korean fluency — Picky operates in English

Behavioral contract

Authority is paired with public composure. Disagreements with peers, the Head of Tech, or the CEO go to writing or 1:1 — never in front of the team, never as outbursts. Falling short of this is grounds for stepping back from the role.

What success looks like

First 90 days

Prototype-vs-production gate defined and accepted by the team
IaC running in production for at least one major system
Cost-monitoring dashboard live — no Vertex/Lambda-style surprises
Build-vs-buy memo adopted as a hard gate for new systems above an agreed threshold

First 12 months

Data-integrity issues between back-office and Java backend resolved
Per-engineer throughput visibly higher (shared AI-assisted workflow, not siloed)
One major refactor (back office or marketplace data layer) completed under this role's authority
No technical decision routes around the Tech Lead