[Hiring] Lead Software Engineer @ThriveCart

Role Description

We're building a best-in-class editor for ecommerce conversion, and we need someone to lead that team through it, not just staff it. This is a hybrid role: half technical team lead, half AI-native product thinker.

• You won't just write code faster with AI tools. You'll understand how AI behaves inside a page builder — what it should generate, suggest, or automate for someone building a landing page or funnel to convert better — and you'll propose and build those features yourself.
• You'll also run the team: unblock engineers, make the calls when priorities conflict, and be the person who ships when no one else can.
• This is not a hand-off role, and it's not a pure IC role either. You're accountable for the team's output and for your own.

What You'll Own

• Technical direction for the editor, including how AI shows up inside the product (generation, layout suggestions, content assist, personalization — whatever we decide moves conversion).
• The team's delivery: sprint output, unblocking, code review quality, and stepping in to build when the team is stretched.
• Incident response and production health for the editor.
• Ramping and mentoring the rest of the team, including their AI tool usage.

What You'll Do

• Team Leadership & Delivery
  • Own sprint planning, task breakdown, and prioritization for the Editor 2.0 team.
  • Unblock engineers daily — technical blockers, ambiguous requirements, cross-team dependencies.
  • Personally pick up critical-path work when the team is short-handed — this role carries load, it doesn't just delegate it.
  • Run point on code review standards and technical decisions for the team's scope.
• AI-Native Product Judgment
  • Understand how AI features behave inside a visual page/funnel builder — not just "use Copilot to write code faster," but "what should an AI content-suggestion feature do when a merchant drops a new block into their page, and does it actually help them convert."
  • Propose concrete features: what AI should generate, what it should leave alone, where it fails silently vs. loudly.
  • Push back on AI-feature ideas that sound good in a slide but won't survive contact with real page-building workflows or move conversion.
• Code Quality & Testing
  • Write unit and integration tests as part of feature work, not as an afterthought.
  • Participate actively in code reviews — give thoughtful feedback, act on feedback you receive.
  • Identify edge cases and risks during planning, not after deployment.
• AI-Augmented Development
  • Use AI coding tools daily — this is a baseline expectation, not a differentiator.
  • Set the standard for the team: what AI-assisted workflows actually save time vs. add cleanup work.
  • You understand everything you or the team ships — AI accelerates, it doesn't absolve you of the review.

What You Bring To This Role

• Technical Environment
  • Primary stack: TypeScript/Node.js for the new system you'll build, and PHP 7.4/8+ with Laravel for the existing system you'll maintain during the transition.
  • Infrastructure: MariaDB, Redis, AWS (EC2, RDS, CloudWatch, SQS, S3), Docker, GitHub Actions CI/CD.
• Must Haves
  • 6+ years professional software engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years in a lead or de facto lead capacity — owned technical direction for a team, not just senior IC work.
  • Hands-on experience in PHY.
  • Hands-on experience building consumer-facing web products at scale — page builders, website/funnel editors, or similarly complex WYSIWYG/visual editing tools strongly preferred.
  • Demonstrated track record shipping AI-powered product features, not just using AI coding tools.
  • Experience working directly with a PM on roadmap and feature definition, not just executing tickets.
  • Comfortable being the primary escalation point for production issues on their product area.

Success Metrics

• First 30 days
  • Ships their first meaningful feature to production and is running point on the team's sprint cadence.
  • Has proposed at least one concrete AI-feature idea grounded in real conversion data, not just intuition.
• Ongoing / steady-state
  • Team ships against roadmap without the lead becoming the single point of failure — work continues if they're out for a week.
  • At least one AI-native feature they drove goes from idea → shipped, with a measurable lift in conversion (or a clear, honest read on why it didn't move the number).
  • Engineers on the team are visibly leveling up their own AI-assisted workflows because of this person's standards, not just their own output.

What This Role Is Not

• Not a pure people-manager role — this person writes code and ships features.
• Not a "prompt AI tools all day" role — the AI fluency is table stakes, the differentiator is product judgment about AI inside the product.
• Not a role for someone who needs a fully-scoped ticket queue — they should be generating the roadmap items together with the product manager, not just executing them.

Learn More About ThriveCart

• Our Values are:
  • Commit to Excellence
  • Find a Way
  • Help Each Other
  • Keep Growing
  • Data First
• Our team and product are growing rapidly - we achieved YoY growth of 64% from 2022-2023, and we’re just getting started.
• We believe in open communication, clear goal setting, and that people do best when they have a growth mindset and want to get things done.
• Our team comes from diverse backgrounds and companies like Shopify, Salesforce, and BigCommerce, and we are running like an independent SaaS company within a PE fund.