Lead Engineer (Remote or Hybrid)

Job Description

Optix is seeking a Lead Engineer 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 the Optix platform, establishing the technical foundation for the future of our product, and setting good team practices. You'll make architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and partner directly with our CEO 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.

This role is open to candidates Remote, across Canada. If you’re local to Vancouver, the team works out of our beautiful Gastown office 3 days per week.

What You'll Do:

As the Lead Engineer at Optix, you will be primarily responsible for the technical health of the platform, architecting and building new features, and leading the way on the transition to being an AI first, agentic platform. 

Technical Leadership:

• Partner with our CEO to translate business objectives into technical solutions and architectural decisions
• Mentor our engineering team, building their technical and AI capabilities
• Evolve engineering practices, including adopting AI-first development
• Own the architecture and long term technical vision for the Optix platform, develop and execute a plan to achieve it
• Architect scalable AI systems that integrate seamlessly with our existing automations platform
• Guide technical decisions on model selection, integration patterns, and system architecture
• Establish evaluation frameworks and quality standards for AI feature development

Hands-On Development:

• Design and build features in the Optix platform. 
• Work with Customer Success and Technical Support teams to resolve customer issues, and develop the system to reduce future ticket volume
• Implement monitoring and evaluation infrastructure to continuously improve feature performance
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI across our platform for maximum customer impact

Requirements

Who you are:

• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• Strong full-stack engineering fundamentals
• Proven experience at a SaaS company, navigating ambiguity and establishing AI best practices
• You’ve developed AI-based software
• Hands-on experience 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

Bonus points for:

• Experience leading the cultural shift to AI-first development practices within an existing team
• Knowledge of AI frameworks like LangChain, Pydantic, LlamaIndex for building reliable AI features
• Experience with model evaluation, A/B testing, performance monitoring, and quality assurance for AI features
• Experience with PHP/Laravel and MySQL
• 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

This 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 of $120,000 - $140,000
• 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 for local candidates

About Optix

By 2030, up to 30% of all workspaces will be flexible. As the world undergoes this monumental shift, flex space operators are leading the charge towards a new way of working - characterized by community, connection, and creating exceptional experiences.

Optix is the first and only flex space automation software, enabling coworking and flex operators to thrive. We provide operators with a proven B2B SaaS platform that automates their operations, engages their community, and helps them grow their business.

We're a passionate group of people who support each other to do our best work. We enjoy pour-over coffee, chocolate croissants, and jamming on our vision of changing the way the world works. Now we're embarking on our most exciting chapter yet—transforming from automation to intelligence, from reactive to predictive, from operational to conversational.

We welcome applicants from all walks of life. Even if you don’t feel you meet every requirement listed, we would still love to hear why you think you would be an awesome addition to our team, and we encourage you to apply.

Join us as we build the AI-powered future of flexible workspaces.