Hybrid Technical Lead, AI Focus

at Optix

• Job title: Technical Lead, AI Focus
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Cloud, ETL, Google Cloud Platform, Laravel, MySQL, PHP
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Vancouver, Canada

About the role

• Technical Lead overseeing AI integration and feature development for a SaaS startup. Guiding the engineering team towards an AI-first culture while building innovative solutions.

Responsibilities

• Optix is seeking a Technical Lead to guide our engineering team through the shift to an AI-first product and development culture—serving as both a hands-on builder and technical mentor.
• In this role, you'll split your time between building AI-powered features yourself and establishing the technical foundation for how AI integrates across our product and team practices. You'll make architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and partner directly with our Head of Product to translate product vision into technical reality. You’ll collaborate directly with the leadership team to ensure Optix not only builds world-class AI capabilities but also does so with a **sustainable, scalable engineering culture** where AI-first thinking becomes second nature.
• This is a unique opportunity to shape transformation in a profitable SaaS company as we evolve from a rules-based automation platform into a conversational, agentic workspace management system.
• *Note: This is a hybrid opportunity for someone based in Vancouver, BC (60% in our beautiful waterfront Gastown office, 40% from home).*

Requirements

• **Who you are:**
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years building production AI features that customers actually paid for (not just prototypes)
• Proven experience at a SaaS company, navigating ambiguity and establishing AI best practices
• Strong full-stack engineering fundamentals; experience with PHP/Laravel and MySQL is a significant plus
• Deep hands-on expertise with AI APIs, prompt engineering, RAG implementation, and evaluation frameworks
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving adoption of new technical practices across a team
• Demonstrated ability to make architectural decisions that balance innovation with pragmatism
• You can clearly articulate when *not* to use AI and how to evaluate whether AI features are actually working
• **AI technical expertise:**
• Production experience integrating LLMs into existing application architectures
• Knowledge of AI frameworks like LangChain, Pydantic, LlamaIndex for building reliable AI features
• Deep understanding of prompt engineering, context management, and structured output for business applications
• Experience with model evaluation, A/B testing, performance monitoring, and quality assurance for AI features
• Knowledge of when to use RAG vs fine-tuning vs prompt engineering
• **Bonus points for:**
• Experience leading the cultural shift to AI-first development practices within an existing team
• Data engineering background: ETL pipelines, vector databases, embedding management
• Deployment expertise: Containerization, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), monitoring AI systems in production
• Prior experience in B2B SaaS platforms serving enterprise customers

Benefits

• We take care of our teammatesThis is a unique opportunity to join a rapidly growing technology startup. Taking care of our team on this journey is a priority. We offer:
• Competitive salary compensation and commission structure
• Strong Employee Stock Option Plan offering
• Excellent health and dental coverage program provided by Sunlife
• Mission-driven workplace experience with a positive, collaborative and supportive team culture
• Personal and professional growth opportunities
• Healthy snacks and locally roasted coffee – slow pour is our jam
• Team lunches and socials
• Annual health and fitness credit
• Fun offsite activities that allow us to reconnect as a team
• A beautiful, waterfront Gastown office and a flexible 60/40 hybrid workplace plan