Alignable is a small business referral network where over 6 million businesses owners feel at home.
The Role
As a Lead Software Engineer, you will manage a Feature Team to integrate AI into user experiences, guide technical direction, and ensure high-quality software development.
Summary Generated by Built In
Who we are:
Alignable is the largest online network of small business owners, with over 10 million members across North America. Our mission is to empower small businesses by helping them build trusted relationships and grow through referrals, connections, and community.
We don't just connect business owners—we unlock the hidden potential in their existing networks by revealing second- and third-degree relationships that drive real business growth. Think of it like this: when a software engineer realizes their college roommate's older brother is the hiring manager at the startup they want to join, or when a founder discovers their neighbor's former colleague is exactly the technical co-founder they need—that's our platform at work, but for small businesses. We built the technology that makes those invisible connections visible.
Here's the technical challenge we've solved: we're processing relationship data across 30,000+ communities, building recommendation engines that surface the most valuable connections, and creating trust-based networking algorithms that actually work. This isn't just social networking—it's relationship intelligence at scale.
With 20,000+ new freemium members joining each week, we're entering a new phase of scale where product-led growth (PLG) is core to our transformation. As a profitable Series C company, we're not burning cash hoping to find revenue—we're scaling proven technology that millions of real entrepreneurs depend on to build their businesses.
Your work here directly impacts the backbone of the American economy. Small businesses employ nearly half of all American workers, and when your code helps them find customers, suppliers, or services through trusted referrals, you're making a tangible difference in millions of lives.
If you want to empower the small business owner through a networking platform unlike any other, let's talk.
What you will be doing:
Hybrid team manager and individual contributor.
You'll be leading a team of 3-5 software engineers and its delivery toward driving positive outcomes while being hands-on enough to commit code regularly. You're joining Alignable as we're integrating AI throughout our platform, bringing AI-powered features to life for 9+ million small business owners.
Your People Leadership: You'll conduct regular 1:1s with your direct reports, helping assign projects that play to their individual strengths while building their skill sets. You'll run performance reviews and provide career coaching while fostering a collaborative team environment. You'll be the person your engineers come to for both technical guidance and professional development.
Your Technical Leadership: You'll perform code reviews, make architectural decisions, and jump into technical challenges when your team needs senior expertise. You'll manage team delivery cadence using tools such as JIRA while personally tackling complex React/TypeScript problems and debugging challenging issues that require deep technical knowledge. You'll take clear goals with ambiguous details, turn them into actionable technical steps, and own its execution while setting technical standards for your team.
Your Cross-Functional Leadership: You'll be a partner to Product Managers and UX Designers on feature teams, influencing technical approaches and product decisions. When Marketing shares what excites prospects in demos, or when a PM discovers that restaurant owners using AI recommendations generate 3x more referrals, you'll architect the solution and guide your team's execution while ensuring the end-to-end system meets both user needs and engineering excellence standards.
What you’ll be using day-to-day:
- Frontend: Typescript, React, Jest
- Backend: Ruby on Rails, Elixir, Phoenix, Go
- Databases: Postgres, Redis, DynamoDB, OpenSearch
Other parts of our tech stack you’ll see:
- Mobile apps: Kotlin and Swift
- Deployment: CI/CD with Github and AWS
- Analytics: Kinesis, Lambda, Python, Pandas, Snowflake
- Machine Learning: Pytorch, Tensorflow, Sagemaker
- LLMs: Claude, GPT, plus other AI tools
What success looks like:
- You'll develop each team member through structured 1:1s, helping them navigate technical challenges and career growth opportunities.
- You'll maintain high engineering standards through hands-on code reviews, architecture guidance, and establishing team technical practices.
- You'll personally solve complex technical problems that require senior-level expertise.
- You'll partner with product and design to influence technical and business outcomes.
- You'll create an environment where engineers can do their best work - removing blockers, providing context, and fostering collaboration.
- You'll bring AI experience and best practices to accelerate team velocity and product development.
What you will bring:
- You have 3+ years of experience directly career managing software engineers - conducting 1:1s, performance reviews, career development conversations, and hiring/compensation decisions.
- You have 5-8+ years of hands-on development experience with recent involvement in building complex features; strong React/Typescript, Ruby, or Elixir skills preferred.
- You're comfortable being a player-coach - spending time in code reviews, architectural decisions, and technical problem-solving while developing your team
- You've influenced technical decisions in previous roles - choosing technologies, designing systems, and setting engineering standards.
- You have built or led AI/ML-powered product features or used AI tools to measurably improve team productivity.
- You excel at developing engineering talent with specific examples of helping team members grow their technical skills and advance their careers.
- You have experience collaborating closely with Product teams and can influence technical requirements and product decisions.
- You have experience in Agile/Scrum environments, managing delivery using tools like JIRA, and building scalable systems on AWS infrastructure.
Why Alignable?
- Mission-Driven Impact: Lead critical initiatives at a profitable Series C company that's already helping 9+ million small business owners thrive, with 20,000+ new members joining weekly—your work directly impacts millions of entrepreneurs while growing your career alongside our rapid expansion
- Exceptional Remote-First Culture: Join highly collaborative cross-functional teams where everyone engages directly with our small business community, guided by experienced leadership from Invisalign, Constant Contact, and Vistaprint—work from anywhere (as long as you maintain east coast U.S. working hours) and meaningful mentorship opportunities
- Inclusive Growth Environment: Be part of a team that celebrates diversity like the small business community we serve, with core values emphasizing psychological safety, continuous learning, and bringing your authentic self to work while making a real difference in the world
What we offer:
- Smart, supportive co-workers
- Competitive compensation
- Equity
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Unlimited vacation policy
- Virtual working environment
- Flexible working hours
- Paid Parental leave
- Professional Development Program
- 401(k)
Our culture in action:
- 🎉Enjoy the Journey: We're passionate about our mission but don't take ourselves too seriously. We celebrate customers, teammates, and key moments.
- 🤝 Be Stronger Together: We combine strengths, build trusted relationships, and treat everyone as partners. No egos welcome.
- 🌈Be Different Together: We create space for everyone to show up as their truest selves and seek diverse perspectives.
- 👑Act Like an Owner: We proactively act on behalf of the entire company and customers, not just ourselves. No passing the buck.
- 🎯Change the Game: We start with first principles, assume nothing is impossible, and go after 10x outcomes relentlessly.
- 📈Adapt & Evolve: We accept we won't be right every time and create an environment where people feel safe to admit failure and lean into learning.
- 🧠 Exercise Excellent Judgment: We turn knowledge into understanding based on equal parts data and intuition.
- ⚡Profound Bias for Action: Speed matters. We value calculated risk-taking while avoiding one-way doors.
- ❤️ Be Customer Obsessed: We work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust in everything we decide to work on and how we do it.
Alignable is an equal opportunity employer and encourages all applicants from every background and life experience without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
Top Skills
AWS
Ci/Cd
Claude
DynamoDB
Elixir
Exunit
Git
Go
Gpt
Jest
Kinesis
Kotlin
Lambda
Opensearch
Pandas
Phoenix
Postgres
Python
PyTorch
Ruby on Rails
React
Redis
Rspec
Ruby
Sagemaker
Snowflake
Swift
TensorFlow
Typescript
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The Company
What We Do
Small businesses are the heartbeat of our communities. They are the creators, the risk takers and the problem solvers. Each with a unique story. Our mission is to help them be successful. Today, over 6 million+ small business owners feel at home on Alignable. They connect, share best practices, give each other advice and work together to create referrals and new business.
From our founders, to our engineers and product managers to our marketers and executives, we truly believe that together, small businesses can do amazing things.
Why Work With Us
The Alignable team is made up of small business owners and entrepreneurs at heart. We celebrate our differences in experiences, viewpoints, and identities and comfortably show up as our truest selves because we know it leads to better outcomes. One thing we always agree on is our passion for helping small business owners be successful.
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