Head of Engineering (Hands-on)
Skills
About this role
About GNO
GNO Partners builds the GNO Platform: a suite of tools that helps Amazon sellers optimize their advertising, pricing, and performance. We ingest large volumes of marketplace data daily (Amazon SP-API, Ads API, Amazon Marketing Stream) and turn it into automated bidding optimization, placement management, pricing intelligence, and monitoring that runs while our customers sleep. This is a real data-engineering and product problem, not a CRUD app.
The Role
We're hiring a hands-on engineering leader to run day-to-day delivery so our CTO can focus on architecture and product direction. You'll spend roughly half your time in the code and half running the team: prioritization, planning, 1:1s, and making sure the right things ship at the right quality.
This is a player-coach role. If you've stopped coding, or if you've never managed, this isn't the right fit.
What You'll Own
• Delivery. Sprint planning, prioritization against business goals, estimates, and unblocking the team daily. • Quality. Code review culture, test discipline, and production reliability of our ingestion pipelines and scheduled jobs. • People. 1:1s, onboarding, growth conversations, and first-round hiring screens as the team scales. • Shipping code. You'll carry meaningful features yourself, especially early on; that's how you'll earn the team's trust.
The CTO retains technical vision, architecture direction, the hiring bar, and infrastructure strategy. You two will work as a pair, not a hierarchy of approvals.
Our Stack
• TypeScript end to end (strict mode) • Backend: NestJS API, Temporal workflows for data ingestion and background monitoring • Frontend: React, TanStack Router/Query, AG Grid, Tailwind • Data: Postgres (Supabase), AWS data warehouse (Iceberg, Athena) • Integrations: Amazon SP-API, Amazon Ads API, Amazon Marketing Stream • AI: LangChain/LangGraph with LLM-powered features in production
What We're Looking For
• 7+ years as a software engineer, with 2+ years leading a team of 3-8 while still shipping code • Deep TypeScript/Node.js experience; you can review a NestJS service or a React data grid and give substantive feedback the same day • Experience with data-heavy systems: high-volume ingestion, background job orchestration, or warehouse/analytics pipelines • You've run delivery before: planning, scoping, cutting the right corners, and saying no • Comfortable being the #2 technical voice; you'll challenge the CTO in private and align in public
Nice to Have
• Temporal (or similar: Airflow, Step Functions) in production • Amazon marketplace ecosystem experience (SP-API, Ads API, seller tools) • E-commerce, ad-tech, or analytics product background • Experience introducing lightweight process to a team that previously had little
What Success Looks Like in 6 Months
• Roadmap items ship predictably without the CTO's day-to-day involvement • You've personally shipped features across the API, worker, and frontend • The team knows what they're working on this week and why, and quality has gone up, not down
Hiring Process
• Intro call • Technical deep-dive on a real system you built • Paired code review exercise • Team fit conversation • Offer