Engineering Manager / Tech Lead — Distro

Engineering Manager / Tech Lead — Distro

Location: Remote Reports to: CEO Team: 2–3 engineers

About the role

Distro is an AI-powered recruiting platform. We connect to our customers' existing ATS, sync their jobs and candidates, and run an automated multi-stage pipeline that parses, scores, and interviews applicants using LLMs. AI isn't a feature bolted onto the product — it's the flow the product runs on.

We're looking for someone to lead that engineering effort: own the architecture, own the AWS environment it runs on, and grow a small team. This is a hands-on, full-stack role. You'll be writing code across the stack, not just reviewing it.

What you'll own

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The AI processing pipeline. A chained, asynchronous, multi-stage system built on queued jobs. Every stage depends on the last, and every stage involves a non-deterministic model call that can fail or return something subtly wrong. Keeping it correct, observable, and cost-efficient is the core technical challenge of the job.

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Full-stack feature work. Laravel on the backend, React on the front. You'll move between both — this isn't a backend role with occasional UI tickets.

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AWS infrastructure end to end. ECS, Aurora, S3 and supporting services. You're the person accountable for it, including keeping the bill under control.

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SOC 2 Type 2 compliance. We're certified and intend to stay that way. Expect evidence collection, control remediation, access reviews, and backup restoration testing as part of the normal rhythm.

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A small team. Two engineers today. Code review, technical direction, unblocking, and growth conversations are yours.

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Product input. Our engineers argue about what we build, not just how. If you want a seat at that table, it's here.

Stack

Backend: PHP / Laravel, Laravel Horizon, Redis, Aurora (MySQL) Frontend: JavaScript / TypeScript, React Infrastructure: AWS — ECS, Aurora/RDS, S3, CloudWatch, CloudFormation; Docker AI: OpenAI API — completions, structured outputs, vector stores, prompt caching, evaluation Tooling: GitHub Actions, Jira, Claude Code

What we're looking for

Required

- 5+ years building and running production systems as a full-stack engineer — genuinely comfortable in both Laravel and React, not strong in one and passable in the other

- Strong PHP/Laravel, or strong equivalent experience in another modern backend framework with a real willingness to work in Laravel

- Hands-on AWS ownership — ECS, Aurora/RDS, and the operational side: monitoring, incident response, and cost optimization. Not "I've used AWS," but "I've been the person who gets called when it breaks and the person who noticed the bill was too high."

- Experience with asynchronous job processing: queues, workers, retries, idempotency, dead-letter handling

- Production experience with the OpenAI API — completions, structured outputs, vector stores — including handling non-deterministic output and controlling token cost at scale

- Fluent with AI-assisted development. We use Claude Code daily, and we expect you to work the same way: not just chat prompts, but planning, review, and repo-level context. You should be able to raise the team's ceiling here, not just keep up.

- Experience leading or mentoring engineers, formally or informally

- Professional working English

Nice to have

- SOC 2 or similar compliance experience

- ATS, HR tech, or recruiting domain knowledge

- Infrastructure as code (CloudFormation, Terraform, CDK)

- Experience building or integrating MCP servers or agentic workflows

Who does well here

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Owns outcomes, not tickets. The most valuable work anyone has done in this role wasn't assigned to them. If you need a fully specified backlog to be effective, this isn't the right fit.

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Thinks about the product, not just the implementation. Understands why we're building something and pushes back when the "why" doesn't hold up.

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Explains trade-offs clearly. Can say why one approach was chosen over another and