Technical Lead

About Zoe

Zoe is an end-to-end wealth platform that helps clients grow and protect their wealth through innovative technology and exceptional client service. Zoe has raised a total of $45M in venture capital and is backed by Sageview Capital and the Opportunity Fund. In addition, former and current operators from JP Morgan, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Uber, and DoorDash are part of the cap table.

Its accolades include Nerdwallet's 2022, 2023, and 2024 Best Online Financial Advisor, Morningstar's Fintech Startup of the Year 2019, ThinkAdvisor Luminaries' 2024 Industry Disruption Firm Award, and 2025 FinTech Breakthrough Award for Best Wealth Management Product.

The New York-based company has a strong leadership team with over 20 years of industry experience at firms like Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Principal, and Learnvest. We offer the excitement of a rapidly growing company with the stability of a tenured leadership team and board. We have offices in New York and Bogota, Colombia.

About the Role

We're seeking a skilled Technical leader to oversee cross-functional squads (Back-End, Front-End & QA) from our Bogotá office (Zona Chicó). You'll blend hands-on architectural chops with people leadership—guiding engineers, shaping road-maps, and ensuring every release meets Zoe's bar for quality, security, and speed. You'll thrive in a rapid-growth, high-ownership culture and excel at turning business goals into predictable, high-impact delivery.

Our ideal candidate is an expert who pairs a senior-level back-end (PHP/Laravel, MySQL, AWS) or front-end (ReactJS/NextJS) background with a proven record of building and coaching high-performing teams. You care deeply about code health, developer experience, and creating an environment where engineers work at their best and have the biggest impact of their careers.

Location: Bogota, Colombia

Reports to: VP of Engineering

Level: Tech Lead

We're excited about you because…

• You enjoy reviewing critical PRs, sketching service boundaries, and unblocking gnarly database or performance issues.
• Product, Design, and Leadership trust you because you align priorities, negotiate scope, and keep everyone informed.
• You hold yourself to a high standard and lead by example.
• You raise the bar, then keep raising it. "Good enough" is never good enough for you. You only lead the best teams
• You've grown juniors into seniors through clear feedback, mentorship, and career plans.
• You deliver business outcomes, you track them, improve them, and communicate trade-offs.
• You ask great questions, surface risks early, and foster psychological safety so the best ideas win.

You'll love working at Zoe because we...

• Are a successful, well-funded, fast-growing company with a start-up work vibe.
• Are passionate about our clients and live/breathe the client experience.
• We hire A players. So you will be surrounded by the 'Navy Seals' of their craft that will push you to improve.
• Are a technologically and data-driven business.
• Offer competitive salaries and equity.
• Are at the forefront of tech & finance, redefining personal finance.
• Believe in autonomy & take the initiative.

Responsibilities

• Drive technical planning and execution, balancing short‑term delivery with long‑term system health.
• Conduct code reviews and safeguard architecture principles, maintaining high standards while promoting debt‑reduction strategies to sustain velocity.
• Mentor and guide engineers, fostering skill development and technical growth.
• Own hiring processes, running structured interviews and closing strong candidates.
• Champion Agile practices, unblock teams, track productivity, and communicate risks early to Product & Leadership.
• Enforce quality and reliability practices including testing, observability (OpenTelemetry, Datadog), SOC‑2 controls, and incident post‑mortems that improve MTTR.
• Partner with Product and Design to balance features vs. platform work, sequence roadmaps, and deliver concise, data‑backed updates.
• Communicate technical challenges and solutions clearly to stakeholders, translating complexity into actionable insights.
• Advocate for technical health and scalability, pushing back when necessary with well‑reasoned arguments.
• Model company values such as ownership and bias‑for‑action while fostering a learning mindset across the organization.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building production back‑end systems with Laravel/PHP and MySQL; AWS experience is a plus.
• 3+ years as a Tech Lead or Engineering Manager, leading full‑stack squads in high‑growth startups or scale‑ups.
• Proven ability to make architectural trade‑offs (monolith vs. services, sync vs. async, SQL vs. NoSQL) and drive migrations without disruption.
• Fluent in modern Agile/Lean practices, CI/CD, trunk‑based development, and metrics‑driven improvement (cycle‑time, deployment frequency, change failure rate).
• Track record of instituting test strategies, code‑quality gates, and security best practices (OWASP, secrets management).
• Strong communication skills, able to translate technical complexity into business terms, negotiate scope with Product, and inspire engineers with clear direction.

Benefits:

• Competitive base salary.
• Healthcare & Dental coverage.
• Commuting & Gym benefits.
• Lunch every day at the office.
• Opportunity to shape the culture of a fast-growing company as an early team member.
• Annual company offsite in New York City for our Colombia-based team — travel expenses covered

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