Lead Software Engineer

HappyCo is a company where people can grow their careers and work with like minded people, with no egos or politics. HappyCo is values driven and offers a flexible, supportive culture. Join HappyCo and Make Work Happy!

The Role

We’re looking for an Engineering Lead who thrives in a fast-moving startup environment and is motivated by shipping valuable software quickly . This is a hands-on, execution-focused leadership role , not a people-management role. You’ll lead technical direction, prioritization, and decision-making , ensuring the team delivers functionality that is immediately useful to customers—and can be iterated upon to unlock even more value.

You’ll work closely with Product and Design to turn customer needs into pragmatic solutions, balancing speed, quality, and long‑term sustainability across multiple products and codebases.

What You’ll Do (Day to Day)

• Lead a team of engineers across several products and codebases, breaking down work and driving delivery of high‑quality, performant solutions.
• Own technical direction and standards, driving a strong culture of automated testing, observability, and operational excellence through activities such as hands‑on code review.
• Address urgent customer needs by triaging and solving Support tickets, balancing short‑term fixes with resolving the deeper root causes.
• Partner with Product and Design to ensure the team is always working on the most valuable problems, identifying the simplest viable solution to quickly deliver customer impact.
• Deliver functionality that is immediately useful, then guide iterative improvements to expand customer value over time.
• Identify risks, technical debt, and architectural concerns early, and make pragmatic decisions about when to invest vs. move fast.
• Communicate clearly with stakeholders about scope, tradeoffs, timelines, and expectations—from Support issues to new product features.
• Present and document significant architectural shifts to Engineering leaders, and regularly communicate performance to ensure system architecture addresses customer and HappyCo needs.
• Lead sprint planning, daily technical discussions, and other delivery rituals with the Product Manager and Design Lead.

What We’re Looking For

• Relevant tertiary qualifications (e.g. Bachelor/Graduate degree in Science/Computer Science/Software Engineering, IT certification or similar) or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years experience with Go or Ruby on Rails, plus strong JavaScript/TypeScript experience. (Our stack includes Go, Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and GraphQL)
• Proven ability to lead technical work across multiple systems in a startup or fast‑changing environment.
• Strong product and customer intuition, with the ability to translate business needs into concrete technical decisions.
• Track record of shipping production software that customers actively use.
• Comfortable making tradeoffs to balance speed, quality, and scalability.
• Clear communicator who can align engineers, product managers, designers, and other stakeholders.

What This Role Is (and Is Not)

• This role is:
• Focused on technical leadership, execution, and delivery.
• Centered on customer value and business outcomes.
• Hands‑on and decision‑oriented.

• This role is not:
• A people-management role.
• Responsible for team career development, performance reviews, or regular 1:1s.
• A purely architectural or advisory position.

How We Measure Success

• The team consistently ships valuable, reliable software with tight customer feedback loops.
• Support volume and severity decrease as root causes are addressed.
• Delivery is predictable, with clear tradeoffs, communication, and improvement paths.
• Technical decisions enable the team to move quickly today without introducing unnecessary technical debt for tomorrow.

About HappyCo

Founded in 2011, HappyCo (happy.co) builds mobile and cloud solutions to enable real‑time property data. Our flagship product suite “Happy Property” has more than 5 million units on its platform.

We’re everyday people with a shared purpose — improving the lives of others. Our team is made up of thinkers, talkers, planners, makers, builders and everything in between. Together, we’re turning our passions into happier communities!

When customers use our software, their communities get stronger. Our tools empower everyone in multifamily property management to improve their operations and maximize returns, which means they’re building better experiences for their residents. Learn more about our Product Vision here!

Our HappyCo Culture & Values

HappyCo strives to build better communities. So naturally, we are dedicated to making our own community an enjoyable place that lets us do our best work. We’re devoted to building an inclusive, supportive culture that empowers each HappyCo’er to succeed and grow. To learn more about our culture, check out our Glassdoor page and our careers page!

We believe in supporting people to do their best work and thrive, and building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company is core to our mission. Our goal is to ensure that HappyCo upholds an inclusive environment where all people feel that they are equally respected and valued, whether they are applying for an open position or working at the company. We welcome applicants of any educational background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, age, citizenship, socioeconomic status, disability, and veteran status. HappyCo is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures.

A note to Recruitment Agencies: Please don’t reach out to us about our roles -- we’ve got it covered. We don’t accept unsolicited agency resumes and HappyCo is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes