Head of Engineering Position
Hey, I'm Cristian, founder of Ken AI. We're a cold email platform with a team of 7. I'm looking for someone to own our entire technical operation - infrastructure, architecture, AI systems, and a small dev team.
You'll be hands-on writing code every day while making architecture decisions for a system that processes 1M+ emails monthly across 14+ microservices, 3 database engines, and 25+ third-party API integrations. This is a leadership role from day one.
Apply Here
Compensation & Location
$3-5K/month
This is an early-stage startup - the base reflects where we are now. Your salary will rise as our revenue rises.
Remote position
With flexible hours, except team meetings in EU timezones.
Equity available for exceptional candidates
What you'll actually do
1
.NET Backend and infrastructure
Our core platform is .NET 8.0 / C# with Clean Architecture (onion/DDD). You'll be writing code in it daily - new features, refactoring, performance fixes. We run 14+ independently deployed services (scraper, AI workers, enrichment pipelines, API gateway, event processors) on Linux VPS with GitHub Actions CI/CD deploying via SCP to systemd. You own all of it.
2
AI systems
We orchestrate across OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, XAI Grok, and OpenRouter. This is production AI at scale - batch processing, prospect qualification, email personalization, list segmentation. You'll optimize prompts at a systems level, manage cost across providers, handle rate limits and failover, and build the pipeline that lets our AI write emails that convert.
3
Databases
MySQL (Pomelo, 60+ tables, 67 entities, bulk enrichment writes), Redis (StackExchange - caching, Streams for click tracking and campaign events, consumer group management), MongoDB (event storage, aggregation pipelines for analytics).
4
Reliability and monitoring
We need proper observability. Current state: Serilog + health checks per service, Sentry on frontend, but no centralized dashboard. Need uptime monitoring and SLA tracking.
5
Lead a dev team
2-3 developers: a frontend dev (4y exp, Next.js), an email server engineer (2y exp), and me as the founder (3y exp, usually involved in AI dev and automations). Code reviews, architecture guidance, PR-based workflow enforcement. You're the only senior person - you own backend architecture decisions solo.
Requirements
01
.NET / C# - deep expertise
.NET 8.0, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core. Clean Architecture / DDD. Multi-database experience: MySQL, Redis, MongoDB. This is the primary backend and you'll live in it.
02
Distributed systems
Managing multiple independently deployed services in production. API gateway patterns, event streaming (Redis Streams), retry strategies, service orchestration. You've dealt with cascading failures and data consistency across services - not just in tutorials.
03
DevOps & infrastructure
Linux VPS administration, CI/CD pipeline management (GitHub Actions), systemd services. Comfortable with current bare-metal setup but capable of planning container/K8s migration when scale demands it.
04
API integration management
We have 25+ third-party integrations (Apify, EmailBison, Instantly, Short.io, etc.). You understand rate limits, retry strategies, and failover across enrichment providers. When a provider goes down, the system degrades gracefully.
05
AI/LLM integration
Multi-model orchestration in production. Prompt engineering at a systems level - not chatbot prompts, but batch processing pipelines that qualify and personalize across hundreds of thousands of prospects. Cost optimization across LLM providers.
06
AI-native development workflow
You use Claude Code, Cursor, or similar daily. You've experimented with the broader AI tooling ecosystem (OpenClaw, Opencode, Codex CLI). You can shape team workflows around AI-assisted development.
07
Database administration
Production MySQL management at scale (60+ tables, bulk writes). Redis operations (cache invalidation, Stream consumer management, memory monitoring). MongoDB administration (aggregation pipelines, event storage). Query performance tuning is a recurring part of the job.
08
Monitoring & observability
Setting up centralized logging, APM, alerting, and uptime monitoring. You know how to set up alerts that catch problems before they become incidents.
09
Team leadership
Code review and architecture guidance for 3 people. Comfortable being the only senior engineer. No delegation chain. You set quality standards and enforce them.
10
Good English
You'll communicate daily with me, the team, and occasionally with third-party vendors.
Who am I?
I'm Cristian, 20 years old, from Moldova. This is my 3rd startup. I started the biggest eLearning platform in Romania & Moldova at 14 (Smart Curs, 50,000+ students), then built a marketing agency for course creators (Ken Group), and now Ken AI.
Who is our team?
We're 7 people right now. Small, fast, no bureaucracy. Half developers building our tech, half on delivery and growth. You'll work directly with everyone - our dev team, outreach team, and me.
We're looking for brilliant people with personality.