Thanks for your interest in working at Tuple! We're no longer accepting new applications for this role.
You can always tell us why we should hire you anyway or get notified when we post new openings.
We're looking for a Head of Engineering to lead our small but mighty engineering team (currently 6 folks).
Our ideal candidate is technically sharp, empathetic and warm, and has experience leading teams of engineers.
This position is open because after five years of excellent work, our founding CTO Spencer has decided to step down from his leadership role to become a part-time individual contributor.
Tuple is an app that lets developers pair program while working remotely. Think of it a bit like super-powered Zoom screen-sharing, used by developers who are writing code together in real-time from the comfort of home.
Folks switch to Tuple because the screen-sharing is extremely high quality (important when viewing source code together) and the remote control is seamless and low-latency (important when controlling someone else's computer via the Internet).
We founded the company five years ago because we disliked the existing pairing tools, and believed that by focusing on this particular use-case, we could create something developers would love.
Turns out we were pretty much right: we've grown to millions in ARR and tens of thousands of paid users in five years without any outside funding or full-time sales help.
(Don't worry: we're not expecting you to be familiar with these technologies! While we'd love to see you level up on them over time, we're hiring more for leadership, management, and cultural fit.)
As Tuple is a persistently-connected desktop application for real-time communication, our stack is a bit atypical. Much of this stems from our choice to optimize for low latency and first-class integration with the host operating system above most other concerns.
Real-time communication is handled by a cross-platform engine written in C++. We offer native clients for Mac and Linux that wrap this engine. These clients rely on the engine for heavy lifting while integrating with OS-level APIs. The Mac client is mostly Swift and Objective C, and the Linux client is C++.
Billing, user management, and other supporting features are provided by a Rails backend. Persistent connections and call negotiation are handled by a service written in Go.
We believe a Head of Engineering has three primary responsibilities:
Today, we have an engineering team of 6, and we'll expect you to manage those folks. We're big believers in the power of employee retention, and we'll want you to invest substantial effort into ensuring folks stay at Tuple a long time.
Your team is likely to expand over time, but not particularly fast. We prefer to hire slowly, let folks get fully integrated, and not hire again until we have a specific pain or highly-promising opportunity we can't pass up. Your team may eventually double in size, but likely over the course of a few years.
When we do hire in Engineering, you will lead that process. You'll get the final say over which candidates we hire, so you should be excellent at screening and interviewing. If someone isn't working out, you'll be responsible for managing that situation as well.
Hiring, managing, and firing are hugely important levers, and we'll need you to pull them well.
(Good news: this isn't a rescue mission! Our average call quality rating is a 4.6 out of 5. We have excellent uptime and the app rarely crashes. We work with Latacora to regularly improve our security posture. Overall, the engineering org is performing well, and you get to make it even better.)
Importantly, you'll always remember that the point of all this technical excellence is to make a product our customers can love and rely on. That idea should energize you more than generic engineering prowess.
As Head of Engineering, you are the human API between engineering and the rest of the company.
For example…
This position is available because our current CTO Spencer has decided he’d prefer to be a part-time individual contributor at Tuple. This transition is happening amicably, and Spencer is excited to hand off his engineering leadership duties to someone who can take that team to the next level.
As an owner, Spencer will occasionally provide high-level guidance to the executive team as part of our “board”, but will be fully giving up his day-to-day leadership responsibilities.
Please demonstrate your excellent writing skills by writing a tightly-edited pitch for yourself. When you're done, email it to jobs+head-of-eng@tuple.app.