Technical Lead

Company Description

Picky, founded in 2020, began as a global skincare review community focused on K-beauty. Today, Picky is the largest influencer marketing platform for K-beauty brands, enabling them to scale influencer-driven content globally. Specializing in influencer acquisition, management, and content strategy, Picky assists brands in executing effective marketing campaigns. By connecting beauty and skincare creators with brands, Picky provides efficient solutions for expanding brand reach and increasing visibility.

What the role owns

1. Infrastructure authority — cost monitoring, deployment sign-off, third-party integration approval, infrastructure-as-code (Pulumi/Terraform) for production systems.
2. Prototype-vs-production gate — define and enforce the boundary. Free prototype environment any engineer can use without approval. Cost or production thresholds above which Tech Lead sign-off is required.
3. Architecture & technical standards — review architecture decisions, catch data-integrity drift early (back-office ↔ Java backend inconsistencies, materialized-view staleness), keep PR review meaningful beyond syntax.
4. AI-assisted engineering practices — set the tooling baseline (Claude Code, agents, eval flow). One shared workflow across the team, not six personal experiments.
5. Technical mentorship — supports each engineer technically. Direction and people-management sit with the Head of Tech.

What we're looking forMust-haves

• 5+ years engineering experience with deep backend or systems work. Track record of carrying production responsibility solo.
• AI-native — uses AI tooling daily, has opinions on what works, has shipped real features with AI in the loop.
• Infrastructure depth — comfortable owning AWS/GCP, IaC, cost monitoring, CI/CD. Can articulate build-vs-buy trade-offs in numbers.
• Composure under pressure. This team has accumulated frustration. The role demands disagreeing in writing, not in outbursts. (See Behavioral contract.)
• Onsite in Seoul.

Strong pluses

• Existing Picky tenure and respect from the team
• Led an architectural refactor that materially reduced complexity
• Authored build-vs-buy memos — proof of cost-led thinking, not preference-led
• Direct people-management experience — mentoring included

Not required

• Korean fluency — Picky operates in English
  

Behavioral contract

Authority is paired with public composure. Disagreements with peers, the Head of Tech, or the CEO go to writing or 1:1 — never in front of the team, never as outbursts. Falling short of this is grounds for stepping back from the role.

What success looks likeFirst 90 days

• Prototype-vs-production gate defined and accepted by the team
• IaC running in production for at least one major system
• Cost-monitoring dashboard live — no Vertex/Lambda-style surprises
• Build-vs-buy memo adopted as a hard gate for new systems above an agreed threshold

First 12 months

• Data-integrity issues between back-office and Java backend resolved
• Per-engineer throughput visibly higher (shared AI-assisted workflow, not siloed)
• One major refactor (back office or marketplace data layer) completed under this role's authority
• No technical decision routes around the Tech Lead