Lead Backend AI Product Engineer

YGO.ai is a VC-funded AI tourism platform looking for a Product Engineer who uses AI to ship fast. IMPORTANT: This is not a traditional coding role - you'll use Claude Code and other AI tools to 10x your output always thinking about how the product or feature you are working on benefits the user. Also: we have no QA team - you OWN the quality of what you ship!

For the Lead level: every engineer at YGO already owns their work end-to-end (IC + DRI), so this role is not about "more ownership".

A Lead is the spokesperson, coordinator and facilitator for their pod, internally with product, design and leadership, and externally with clients.

You think product-first, contribute meaningfully in product planning sessions and represent your pod in those rooms.

You remain a hands-on backend engineer. The spokesperson, coordination and facilitation work sits on top of your IC contributions, not instead of them.

Expect the majority of your week to still be engineering.

This is not a people-management role: no one-to-ones, no performance reviews, no coaching responsibilities.

What you'll actually do:

• Own features end-to-end: from specs to deployment to fixing bugs
• Use Claude Code to generate Golang backend code
• Review AI output for quality and architectural fit
• Fix bugs to learn our codebase, then rapidly build new features
• Make quick decisions on what to build vs buy vs generate with AI
• Talk to customers when they report issues and ship fixes same day

Additionally, at Lead level:

• Be the spokesperson for your pod, internally with PMs, designers and leadership, and externally with clients and partners
• Coordinate work across the pod: break initiatives into chunks, sequence them, surface blockers and facilitate hand-offs
• Represent your pod in product planning sessions and bring a strong product-driven point of view to scoping and trade-offs
• Join client meetings when needed to gather context, align on requirements and report on delivery

• Ownership mentality with a strive for elegantly simple high-quality solutions
• Strive for max quality - you test your own work thoroughly since we have no QA team, everything you ship MUST work
• Product mindset - you care about WHY we're building something
• Proven experience using Claude Code - share specific examples
• Strong Golang experience - you'll review AI's code in these and you must understand how it works
• Passion for simple, secure and observable systems which perform well even under massive load
• Ability to do on-call once in a while to help maintain our platform's reliability & uptime
• Broad architectural knowledge of building modern full-stack applications
• Excellent spoken English and good internet connection for daily video calls
• European or African timezones (±3 hours from CET)
• Available full-time (40 hours/week)

Required at Lead level:

• Multi-year experience leading a pod, squad or similar unit (this is a hard must, not a nice-to-have)
• A genuinely product-driven mindset: you think about user value and business outcomes before implementation
• Comfort facilitating and coordinating a pod without relying on formal authority
• Willingness and ability to take part in client meetings and act as the external face of your pod
• Strong spoken and written communication for planning sessions, stakeholder updates and client conversations

• You think in features and architecture and not single lines of code
• Get frustrated when development takes weeks instead of days
• Can spot subtle bugs in AI-generated code quickly
• You ship fast but always verify it actually works
• Have shipped real products that customers actually use
• Think "how can AI build this?" as your first instinct
• (Lead) You're energised by product planning sessions and have opinions about what the pod should build next, not just how
• (Lead) You're comfortable being the face of your pod, both in internal planning rooms and on calls with clients, * You've never used Claude Code or similar AI coding tools
• You're a perfectionist who loves to code
• You need detailed specs before starting
• You see AI as a threat rather than leverage
• You're outside European/African timezones
• (Lead) You're looking for a people-management role with one-to-ones, performance reviews and career coaching, that's not what this is
• (Lead) You want to lead a team in name but not be hands-on in the codebase
• (Lead) You'd rather avoid client meetings or stakeholder-facing conversations
• (Lead) You think product planning is someone else's job and you just want the tickets handed to you