Full Job Description
Keet is a fully peer-to-peer messaging and video calling app built on Holepunch's P2P stack. There are no servers, no middlemen, and no data harvesting. People talk directly to each other, with end-to-end encryption by design.
We're taking Keet to a billion users, competing head-on with WhatsApp and Telegram. Product sets the direction. We're looking for a Product Engineering Lead to turn that direction into features people love, built to a standard that holds up at global scale.
You lead the teams that build Keet's features: the API team, which adds feature-focused APIs to Keet's core, and the frontend team, which builds the React app on top, each with its own lead. You report directly to the CTO and take direction from product. Product owns the what and the why. You own the how and the engineering bar. The split is roughly 70% engineering leadership and 30% product.
You're a combination of three things. You're an engineering leader who has helped teams ship consumer products at speed. You have real product sense and can partner with PMs as an equal, shaping what gets built, not just executing it. And you have an intuition for distributed, local-first systems, so you can work fluently on top of a P2P engine without needing to build it yourself.
Responsabilities
Engineering
3 Run the API and frontend teams day to day: unblocking, reviewing, and keeping them shipping.
3 Set and hold a high engineering bar for performance, reliability, and clean APIs.
3 Own the technical design of features and the API surface between Keet's core and the app.
3 Make sure the API team works closely with our deep tech teams on code reviews, design, and anything that touches the engine.
Product Partnership
3 Work alongside Keet's product managers to turn vision and roadmap into scoped, buildable work.
3 Push back when scope and reality don't match, and propose better paths when they exist.
3 Bring an engineering perspective to product decisions, especially where P2P opens doors that centralized apps can't.
3 Help the team move fast, using AI tools and quick prototypes to validate ideas before committing to them.
Leadership
3 Create clarity around team goals and make sure everyone knows what success looks like.
3 Mentor team leads to build strong team operating systems, improve how their teams work with others, and grow as leaders.
3 Lead by example: roll up your sleeves when the team needs it, and step back when they're ready to own it.
3 Experience managing engineers or engineering leads who ship consumer product, ideally in chat, calling, or social apps.
3 Strong product sense: you can tell a good feature from a busy one.
3 Intuition for distributed and local-first systems. Offline-first and eventual consistency should feel natural. You don't need P2P protocol expertise, because our core abstracts it away.
3 Deep JavaScript and React.
3 Initiative, curiosity, resilience, and the ability to give and receive direct critique.
3 Bonus: experience with local-first apps, CRDTs or sync engines, offline-capable mobile or desktop apps, or open source.
