Lead Software Engineer

Location: Pune, India
Team: Engineering
Type: Full-time

About Acai Travel

Acai Travel is revolutionizing the travel industry with cutting-edge AI agentic solutions for leading Airlines, OTAs, and TMCs. We're rebuilding travel with agentic software.

Our founders previously sold an AI company to American Express GBT—value for your equity is guaranteed! We've grown from 3 clients ($15K MRR) to 10 clients ($80K MRR) at 30% monthly growth.

Our culture is grounded in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism principles, fostering ego-less problem-solving and emotional stillness. We consider the company a playground to become better individuals—you will be transformed into a more empowered, joyful person.

About the Role

We're looking for an exceptional Lead Engineer to establish and grow our Pune engineering team. You'll start by leading 2 engineers and scale the team to 4 by year-end. This is a hands-on technical leadership position where you'll build backend systems while mentoring your team and shaping the technical culture from the ground up.

The lead engineer will report to the Co-Founder & CTO of the company based in Barcelona, Spain.

What Makes You Exceptional

Extreme Ownership: You challenge specs, suggest alternatives, and drive ideas to completion. You take full ownership of your team's delivery.

Product Obsession: You ask "why?" relentlessly and dive into user behavior, business metrics, and customer feedback—teaching your team to do the same.

Optimistic Collaboration: You make everyone more excited about building. Your team feels energized working with you.

Authentic Communication: You build great relationships across distributed teams and bridge Pune, Barcelona, and New York seamlessly.

Craft Excellence: Joy comes from the craft itself. You love building products, mentoring engineers, and creating real user value.

Natural Mentor: You multiply impact through others. Engineers grow faster under your guidance.

What You'll Do

Build and Scale a Team (40%)

• Recruit, interview, and onboard talented engineers from top institutes

• Mentor engineers on technical skills, product thinking, and career growth

• Foster a collaborative, learning-oriented culture aligned with Acai's Zen principles

• Introduce Golang expertise—mentor engineers on Go, run learning sessions, and build team capabilities in both Node.JS and Go

Lead Technical Excellence (60%)

• Design scalable backend services using Typescript + Node.JS (primary stack today) / Golang

• Set engineering standards and technical best practices across both tech stacks

• Hands-on development of critical features and complex technical challenges

• Own technical debt management and system optimization

Drive Product Impact

• Break down complex projects into deliverable milestones

• Partner with product and design to ship features that move business metrics

• Challenge assumptions and bring data-backed technical suggestions

• Make pragmatic tech stack decisions based on team capabilities and business needs

What We're Looking For

Technical Foundation

• B.Tech/B.E. in Computer Science, IT, or related field from a reputed institute

• 5+ years of software development experience, with 1-2 years in technical leadership

• Strong expertise in Typescript + Node.JS with proven track record of building production systems

• Experience with Golang (or strong willingness to become proficient quickly)—you'll be teaching this to your team

• Deep understanding of algorithms, data structures, and distributed systems

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred)

• Comfortable working across multiple programming languages

Leadership & Product-Minded Engineering

• Demonstrated ability to mentor junior engineers and lead technical projects

• Experience building or scaling engineering teams in startup environments

• Deep interest in business models, user behavior, and success metrics

• Track record of shipping features that create measurable business value

Desired Skills

• Experience with building AI / GenAI Products

• Familiarity with Travel Industry systems (GDS, Profile Management Systems, CRMs)

• Understanding of travel domain complexity

Exceptional Qualities

• Intrinsically motivated by building great products and growing people

• Optimistic problem-solver who generates enthusiasm

• Authentic communicator who builds strong cross-functional relationships

• "Yes, and" mentality toward new ideas

Why Join Acai

Proven Growth: 30% monthly growth, founders sold previous company to AmEx GBT

Foundational Leadership: Shape the culture and technical direction of our Pune team from the ground up

Personal Growth: Zen/Buddhist culture focused on self-awareness and empowerment

Meaningful Equity: Significant ownership in category-defining startup (subject to board approval)

Global Exposure: Collaborate with Barcelona and New York teams, travel for strategic customers and epic off-sites

Competitive Package: Best-in-industry salary for Pune market + significant equity

Technical Growth: Work across multiple tech stacks (Node.JS + Go) and learn from our Barcelona Go experts

Location & Benefits

• Location: Pune, India

• Work Model: Full-time, with flexibility as required

• Travel: Strategic customer visits and epic company off-sites worldwide

• Benefits: Competitive salary + significant equity, potential private health insurance