Head of Engineering

Parallelz is building a new technology platform that enables new ways of delivering, discovering, and extending mobile applications, ways that were never thought possible. We allow developers to, with no modifications to their code, transform existing mobile apps into web-native apps that can run anywhere, all without a walled garden app store.

You will be getting in at a pivotal stage, owning the technical strategic roadmap, building a world-class technical team, and working in a small, agile, flat organization to evolve our R&D initiatives into a live, scaled operational platform that will have an impact across the industry.

As Head of Engineering, you will lead a small, senior team of graphics, systems, and platform engineers building deeply technical infrastructure: browser-native runtimes, GPU-accelerated rendering pipelines, low-latency streaming, and the cloud backbone behind it. You will own the technical roadmap end-to-end and partner closely with the CEO to translate product priorities into clear architectural direction.

Parallelz is an AI-native organization. We are not looking for a leader who tolerates AI tooling. We are looking for one who runs on it. You should already think of agentic systems and LLM-based tooling as a core part of how you architect, ship, debug, and review software, and you should be able to push that culture and discipline through an entire engineering team.

Our founding team and advisors are serial entrepreneurs and technologists from Google, Mozilla, MIT Media Labs, and other top organizations. The company is joined by top-tier and global venture funds and angel investors.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the architectural design and technical roadmap end-to-end across the product and our cloud-based infrastructure, partnering closely with the CEO to translate business and product priorities into clear technical direction while ensuring scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.
• Lead and grow a small, senior team of engineers working across graphics (WebGL, WebGPU, OpenGL ES), Android/Linux internals, browser engines, network programming, WASM, WebRTC, DevOps, and cloud.
• Recruit, hire, and develop a world-class, mission-driven technical team, with a high bar for AI-native working style as a baseline expectation, not a bonus.
• Champion and operationalize an AI-native engineering culture: integrate agentic and AI tooling into design, code, review, testing, debugging, and ops; define the patterns, guardrails, and quality bars that let the team move at AI-accelerated velocity without losing rigor.
• Provide hands-on technical guidance to senior ICs, going deep with the team when problems warrant it.
• Facilitate collaboration and information sharing across a hybrid team, with a strong bias toward written, asynchronous, AI-leveraged workflows.
• Promote a culture of first-principles problem-solving where engineers understand every layer of the systems they touch.
• Own the candidate and employee lifecycle for direct reports: hiring, onboarding, goal-setting, performance management, and career development.

Requirements

Must Haves:

• Prior experience in a senior engineering leadership role (VP of Engineering, Head of Engineering, Director of Engineering, Engineering Manager, Technical Director), or a Principal/Staff IC role with proven architectural ownership of a complex software product.
• Deep, daily fluency with AI coding agents, LLM tooling, and agentic systems, with a clear point of view on where they help, where they fail, and how to verify their output.
• Track record of driving team-level adoption of AI-native workflows, not just personal use.
• Experience in a zero-to-one, venture-backed startup environment.
• A passion for invention and a track record of building innovative emerging technologies with strong R&D foundations.
• Track record of shipping live products under rapid iterative development.
• Strong believer in smaller, more senior, highly collaborative teams enabled by aggressive automation and AI leverage.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to operate in a hybrid environment.

Nice to Haves:

• Hands-on background or leadership experience in deeply technical, performance-critical software: graphics programming (WebGL, WebGPU, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, game/browser engines), low-level systems (C/C++, AOSP/Android, Linux internals), WASM, WebRTC, or real-time streaming.
• Experience managing and scaling cloud-based production infrastructure on AWS and/or GCP, alongside familiarity with modern DevOps practices.
• Background in advanced compression, video encoding, AdTech, or Mobile SDK ecosystems.
• Technical product management experience.
• Graduate work and/or a research background in a related area.