Software Tech Lead

We are looking for a Software Tech Lead to join an early-stage deep tech startup and help build and lead an agile and output-oriented team. You will play a crucial role in shaping the product's growth through influencing the architecture, driving code quality, developing software, growing the team and actively contributing to the codebase. We are looking for someone passionate about taking on the deep tech challenge of building innovative structural optimization products. Structural optimization is not easy—it is scarcely applied in industry due to its complex intersection of civil/structural engineering and software engineering. We prioritize results over processes, and your performance will be evaluated based on the quality and impact of your contributions, as well as your influence on team collaboration and delivery. We are creating a scalable solution to a global problem: the construction industry is significantly inefficient, using more concrete and steel than is structurally needed. Our [research team extracted 400 peer-reviewed academic papers](https://vaes.ai/isarticle), representing about 1,900 structures with an average structural inefficiency of 21%. In this role, your software skills will optimize both performance and building structures—helping build more sustainable cities and managing a young team excited to create impact. You will be one of the first software engineers. We currently have 3 software engineers and 12 CSEs (computational structural engineers) who are actively contributing to our code. You will work closely with our CTO, who has relocated from Silicon Valley (SF) to Dubai (and Cairo). He brings experience working with large data sets at Pinterest and Insuretech—and is now focusing on AI-powered structural engineering. ### What we are doing - **Deep Core Tech:** - Engineering Scripts, which enable our computational structural engineers to automate engineering. - Engineering Products, which are larger, more complex products that optimize structures[.](http://VAES.ai) - Workbench, where both Scripts and Products are housed (similar to [Spotify’s Backstage)](https://backstage.io/). - [](http://VAES.ai) Client Portal, which allows clients to interact with our tech and generate savings. - tBE, or the Built Environment, which is our research platform examining the impact of the built environment on the natural environment. - **Future work: LLM Product:** When our foundational tech eventually matures, you will work on the intersection of cutting-edge LLM tech and practical civil engineering applications. Our product roadmap ETA on this is mid to end of 2026. Our tech is already being implemented in real-life projects with significant savings—we are already generating impact. ### Future Growth and Innovation - As our team scales, we dive into innovative technologies, including LLMs and Deep Learning, bringing tangible impact to the world. We will work on developing Agentic systems that design structures, creating distributed systems to process engineering calculations, and applying edge computing to provide scale and direct applications of Machine Learning. - Partnerships with universities and open source: We are looking to partner with Academic institutions and contribute to open-source movements in the coming years. - Based on ownership of product and performance in the role, you will be offered stock options for the opportunity to share ownership in the success of our company. ### What you will bring - Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or related field. - Career Experience: 5-12 years of software development experience, in addition to experience developing, maintaining, and scaling production-level applications. - Technical Expertise: Strong proficiency in Python, QT, Application Architectures like MVVM, and SQL. - Bonus: Familiarity with AWS, Serverless Frameworks, and DynamoDB. ### What we are NOT looking for - Candidates who only work in AI. We **need builders and deep expertise in software engineering and programming skills**—particularly in Python. - Corporate mindset. We are looking for candidates with **startup mentality and a product and ownership mindset** who are effective communicators and movers. - Pure technical managers who refuse to code. We are an early-stage startup, and we are all hands-on deck. We **expect ownership** and desire to support making the startup succeed. ### Mission-oriented - We are looking for experienced devs that are mission-oriented who want to use technology to improve our physical world (i.e. designing our cities and built environment) as opposed to tech that increases advertising sales or optimizes pixels to get more eyeballs. ### What you will do - Architect, build, and ship end-to-end features across desktop (Python, Qt, VTK/PyVista NumPy, Pandas, SQlite, Rust), backend (AWS S3, AWS Lambda, Fast API, DynamoDB) and web (AWS CloudFront, Next JS). - Actively contribute to the codebase (up to 60% of the time) focusing on high-complexity tasks, technical enablers and Proof of Concepts (PoCs) to evaluate and implement innovative technologies. - System Architecture: Design and implement robust, scalable backend architectures that support our product vision and provide high availability and performance. - Maintain and lead the technical roadmap, ensuring alignment with business goals and documenting technical architectures, workflows, and processes. - Work closely with stakeholders to gather requirements, rigorously test components, and deliver impactful features. - Drive Code Quality: Ensure the quality of code through code reviews and testing procedures, promoting best practices in development. - Collaborate regularly with the CTO and CEO to align ongoing technical initiatives with the startup’s broader strategic vision. - Mentorship: After establishing ownership of the product and successful contribution to our codebase, you will be expected to mentor and lead a team of software engineers, improving their code quality and practices. You will also be expected to support in recruitment and scaling our team.