Head of Engineering (Founding Team)

Role

The Head of Engineering (Founding Team) will report to the Chief Product Officer and own technical strategy, architecture, and roadmap for TrophyScan. This is a hands-on leadership role responsible for product velocity, team scaling, architecture decisions, and cross-platform expansion from an existing Swift iOS app and C++ backend.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and execute technical strategy, architecture, and engineering roadmap to ensure speed, stability, and scalability.
• Act as a player/coach: write code, drive architecture, and mentor engineers while setting technical standards.
• Own and evolve the existing Swift iOS app and C++ backend; evaluate cross-platform frameworks (Flutter, React Native) for Android and web expansion.
• Lead and optimize a 20+ person contract engineering team; develop a hybrid staffing model combining in-house and outsourced talent.
• Design and deliver gamified features (leaderboards, scoring systems, contests) to drive engagement and viral growth.
• Build analytics and experimentation frameworks to measure behavior, optimize retention, and improve conversion funnels.
• Integrate and champion AI-powered development tools (e.g., Replit, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Lovable) to boost velocity and enable rapid prototyping.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, design, marketing, and operations; represent engineering with investors and partners.

Requirements

• 5+ years of full-stack or mobile engineering experience, ideally with Swift, C++, or other high-performance frameworks.
• Proven experience building and scaling consumer-facing mobile apps, preferably involving imaging, 3D, AR, or game-like features.
• Strong leadership as a player/coach: comfortable coding, making architecture decisions, and mentoring teams.
• Experience managing distributed teams and designing scalable staffing models that balance internal and contractor resources.
• Comfortable with data-driven growth, gamification, analytics, and experimentation-driven product improvements.
• Enthusiasm for AI-assisted development workflows and enabling non-technical contributors to prototype and iterate.
• Strong communication skills for conveying technical direction to executives, investors, and external partners.
• Based in or near Austin, TX.

Why Join

• Founding-level equity and competitive early-stage compensation.
• Work on a live product in the App Store with an active roadmap and the opportunity to own and evolve the technical foundation.
• Blend cutting-edge tech (3D scanning, AR, AI-assisted development) with an outdoor-focused community and a close founding team partnership in Austin, TX.