Engineering Lead, Key

About us

Key is reimagining how professionals connect, create, and grow together. We're building a platform that transforms professional networking by focusing on authentic relationships and meaningful connections. We believe in the power of real human connection, amplified by technology but driven by people.

About the Role

We're seeking an exceptional Engineering Lead to oversee the development of our community platform. You'll be responsible for architecting and implementing a high-performance, scalable application that handles real-time communication, event management, community spaces, polls, newsletters, AI agents and integration with third-party services. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in building real-time systems that can handle high volumes of concurrent users without performance degradation.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the technical architecture and implementation of our cross-platform communication application
• Manage and mentor a distributed engineering team based in India
• Solve complex technical challenges around stream timeouts and real-time event handling
• Design scalable backend systems that maintain performance under heavy loads
• Implement integration frameworks for third-party services and applications
• Build and maintain features like newsletters, polls, and other engagement tools
• Architect AI-powered features to enhance the platform's capabilities
• Establish engineering best practices, coding standards, and technical documentation
• Work closely with product management to define technical requirements and timelines

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years in leadership roles
• Proven experience building and scaling real-time communication platforms
• Expert knowledge of backend technologies
• Strong experience with WebSockets, Socket.IO or similar real-time communication protocols
• Experience optimizing performance in high-throughput systems
• Track record of successfully managing distributed engineering teams
• Experience with cross-platform development (iOS, Android, Web, Mac, Windows)
• Strong understanding of database technologies (SQL and NoSQL)
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP)
• Knowledge of AI integration in modern applications
• Willing to work late evenings and early mornings with a remote team based out of India

Specialized Technical Skills

• Deep understanding of stream and event-based architectures
• Experience troubleshooting network timeout issues in distributed systems
• Knowledge of message queuing systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ, etc.)
• Experience with database sharding and high-availability configurations
• Understanding of microservices architecture and API design
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with LLM integration and AI-powered features
• Previous work with chat applications or real-time collaboration tools
• Experience with Slack-like community/channel-based messaging systems
• Familiarity with poll systems, newsletter platforms, or similar engagement tools
• Previous experience managing offshore teams, particularly in India

What We Offer

• Competitive salary and equity package
• 100% paid for medical plan for you and your family in US
• Opportunity to build cutting-edge technology in the communication space