Lead Software Engineer – Rails

bolt.new

full-time

Posted on: 3/24/2026

Location Type: Remote

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About the role

Lead and empower your team by coaching and developing engineers through code reviews, pairing, 1:1s, and clear, actionable feedback.
Set technical direction and quality standards, balancing pragmatic delivery with long-term maintainability and managed tech debt.
Translate company goals into an executable roadmap with Product, Design, and AI partners, and coordinate cross-team architecture decisions.
Build a safe, high-performing team culture by hiring well, addressing performance issues early, and creating space to experiment and learn.
Unblock the team and improve velocity by clarifying requirements, advocating for resources, improving processes, and pushing back on unrealistic timelines.
Conduct performance reviews and own career development for core team members.
Hold regular 1:1s to support growth, remove blockers, and provide feedback.
Make hiring decisions and address performance issues proactively.
Build a high-performing, autonomous team culture.
Assign team members across features based on skills, capacity, and priorities.
Participate in coordination meetings with other Team Leads.
Regular 1:1s with Head of Engineering to align on priorities and resources.
Run weekly core team meetings for knowledge sharing.
Champion AI coding tools and model effective usage.
Build AI-powered core platform features and intelligent runtime capabilities.
Dogfood Bolt.new daily and drive product improvements.

7+ years full-stack/systems development, 3+ years leadership
Strong Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and Typescript ecosystem knowledge
Experience designing and scaling REST/GraphQL APIs serving millions of requests
Understanding of distributed systems and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Cloudflare or Azure)
Proven ability to optimize backend performance, caching strategies, and database design
Experience with containerization, virtualization, and sandboxing concepts
Knowledge of load balancing, rate limiting, and designing for high availability
Experience with developer tooling, build systems, and runtime optimization
Track record of architectural decisions balancing speed and maintainability
Daily user of AI coding assistants (Cursor, Copilot, Claude)
Experience building AI-integrated applications and platform features
Performance reviews, career development, and difficult conversations
Growing engineers to senior/staff+ levels
Hiring backend/platform engineers
Building remote team culture
Coaching mindset with a balance of individual and business needs
Experience designing scalable, performant runtime systems
Strong architectural thinking for systems handling scale and growth
Excellent communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders
Pragmatic mindset: ship MVPs, bias toward action, match quality to business need
Business thinking: tie technical work to clear outcomes
Collaborative: knowledge sharing and unblocking others is core work.

Benefits

You do not need a college degree to apply
You do not need to be located in the U.S. — we’re remote-friendly
You do not need to meet every qualification listed above. If this role excites you, we want to hear from you.

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

Ruby on RailsJavaScriptTypeScriptREST APIsGraphQL APIsAWSGCPCloudflareAzurecontainerization

Soft Skills

leadershipcoachingcommunicationcollaborationperformance managementproblem-solvingteam buildingfeedbackmentoringpragmatic mindset