Head of Technology

What is Hunch?

Hunch is a dating app that helps you land a date without swiping like a junkie. Designed for people tired of mindless swiping and commodified matchmaking, Hunch leverages a powerful AI-engine to help users find meaningful connections by focusing on personality over just looks. With 2M+ downloads and a 4.4-star rating, Hunch is going viral in the US by challenging the swipe-left/right norm of traditional apps. Hunch is a Series A funded ($23 Million) startup building the future of social discovery in a post-AI world.

Link to our fundraising announcement

Key offerings of Hunch:

• Swipe Less, Vibe More: Curated profiles, cutting the clutter of endless swiping.
• Personality Matters: Opinion-based, belief-based, and thought-based compatibility rather than just focusing on looks.
• Every Match, Verified: No bots, no catfishing—just real, trustworthy connections
• Match Scores: Our AI shows compatibility percentages, helping users identify their “100% vibe match.”

What are we looking for?

We are looking to hire a Head of Technology, with a clear path to becoming a CTO within 12 months of performance review. As a Head of Technology you will lead all technology functions and work directly with our Co-Founder & CPO.

Hunch has a well-defined tech structure, with dedicated track leads for DevOps, Frontend, Backend, Core Engineering, Data Science, and Quality, comprising a total of 35 engineers. In this role, you will take ownership of these tracks both from an architectural and managerial perspective with responsibilities as under:

Key Responsibilities:Engineering Leadership:

• Own the overall technology strategy and architecture to meet business goals, ensuring scalability, performance, and security.
• Lead a cross-functional team of 35 engineers, including Backend, Frontend, DevOps, Data Science and Quality.
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, where developers write their own test cases and take responsibility of the quality they deliver
• Implement and enforce best practices in coding, design, testing, and operations.
• Lead the team through all stages of the product development lifecycle, from design to delivery.

Product Development and Feature Delivery:

• Drive the timely execution of product features and roadmaps to support the company’s business objectives.
• Collaborate with the product team to define clear priorities and ensure alignment between product and engineering teams.
• Ensure an optimal balance between feature velocity, technical debt management, and system stability.

Performance and Scalability:

• Drive the mission to bring down latency of top 20 APIs to 50ms.
• Drive mission of ANR rates < 0.18% always
• We see 300K MAUs today across US & India. You’ll drive a design that should be able to support 10x traffic.
• Monitor system performance and drive initiatives to improve app performance across the frontend and backend.
• Identify bottlenecks and lead efforts to continuously optimize the infrastructure for higher loads.

Security and Compliance:

• Ensure the security of our platform by implementing industry-standard practices for data protection, access control, and incident response.
• Work with legal and compliance teams to maintain necessary compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements.

Cost and Resource Management:

• Manage the technology budget efficiently, optimizing infrastructure costs while ensuring high system availability and performance.
• Drive cost saving projects where expensive 3rd party tools can be built inhouse 
• Oversee the cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or similar) and negotiate vendor contracts to minimize expenses without sacrificing quality.

Team Building and Mentorship:

• Foster a self managed ownership driven culture 
• Cultivate an environment of continuous learning, ensuring engineers are up-to-date on the latest technologies and practices.
• Promote a collaborative, inclusive, and productive work culture that aligns with Hunch’s values.

Must Haves for the Role:

• Experience: 10+ years of experience in software development and engineering management, with 3+ years in a leadership role. Must have experience scaling technology in a high-growth startup environment.
• Leadership: Proven track record of leading diverse engineering teams (Backend, Frontend, DevOps, Data Science) and delivering high-quality, scalable software solutions. 
• Tech stack - Knowhow of both frontend and backend stacks eg NodeJS, GoLang, Python, Flutter, ReactNative. Knowledge of databases like PostgreSQL, Mongo, Firestore  and experience in migrating code between stacks
• Product-Focused: Ability to align technology efforts with business objectives, with experience working closely with product management teams. Proven record of creation of event driven architectures
• Scalability & Performance: Expertise in designing and managing high-traffic, high-availability systems, with hands-on experience scaling systems to millions of users. Expertise in building fast search systems with caching and elastic search.
• Cloud Experience: Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP), CI/CD pipelines, and containerized applications (Kubernetes).
• Security Expertise: In-depth understanding of security practices for web and mobile applications, including encryption, authentication, and compliance. Understanding of building secure systems with WAF and VPC

Quality Expertise -  Experience of being on top of the list of production bugs to ensure maximum functional quality. Experience in implementing test coverage for both backend and frontend Monitoring: Using tools like Newrelic/ datadog/ grafana to keep track of metrics. Create escalation matrices to manage deviations.

• Communication Skills: Ability to clearly communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders, including the executive team and investors.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience with data science/ML teams and integrating machine learning models into product features.
• Experience in scaled B2C environments.
• Strong understanding of mobile app development and performance optimization, especially in app-based ecosystems.
• Background in leading engineering teams through Series A/B startup journeys and navigating the 1 to 10 and 10 to 100 growth stages.

Expected Key Deliverables:

1. Feature Delivery Index: Measure the efficiency and timeliness of feature releases, including the impact on user engagement and retention.
2. System Performance and Availability: Ensure the app maintains 99.9% uptime, with strong app performance at scale.
3. ANR and Crash Free Rate - Ensure the app maintains < 0.1% ANR and 99.9% crash free rate
4. Response Time - Ensure top 20 APIs have a average response time < 100 ms
5. Code coverage - Ensure >90% code coverage with automated test cases for backend and frontend
6. Security Incident Response: Drive a proactive security strategy with a low number of security incidents and high compliance.
7. Cost per MAU: Maintain cost-efficient infrastructure while scaling effectively to support growing user traffic.
8. Team Growth and Retention: Build and retain a high-performing engineering team, with a strong focus on culture and collaboration.
9. Tech Debt Reduction: Proactively manage and reduce technical debt while delivering new features.

What we have to offer 🙌:

1. Our salaries are competitive. Given the senior leadership role, we’re very open to discussing ESOPs - but expectation is also high given the fast paced environment of a startup that is trying to find a scalable business model.
2. We are based out of Delhi, and this role is also based out of Delhi. #LI-Onsite 
3. Meritocracy-driven, candid & diverse culture.

Life at Hunch

• Work Culture: At Hunch we take our work seriously but don’t take ourselves too seriously. Everyone is encouraged to think as owners and not renters, and we prefer to let builders build, empowering people to pursue independent ideas.
• Impact: Your work will shape the future of social engagement and connect people around the world.
• Collaboration: Join a diverse team of creative minds and be part of a supportive community.
• Growth: We invest in your development and provide opportunities for continuous learning.
• Backed by Global Investors: Hunch is a Series A funded startup, backed by Hashed, AlphaWave, Brevan Howard and Polygon Studios
• Experienced Leadership: Hunch is founded by a trio of industry veterans - Ish Goel (CEO), Nitika Goel (CTO), and Kartic Rakhra (CMO) - serial entrepreneurs with the last exit from Nexus Mutual, a web3 consumer-tech startup.

Hunch links

• join.hunch.in/try
• Hunch Insta

Apply:

If you are passionate about technology, love solving complex problems, and want to be part of a high-growth startup, we would love to hear from you!