About the role

Role: Technical Lead (Hands-on)

SafeEVAC is seeking a Tech Lead to own the technical direction of its full-stack, mission-critical platform spanning on-prem controller software, enterprise cloud backend, operator interfaces, and an IoT device ecosystem.

What you’ll own

Architecture & system-level decisions across:
- Node.js + GraphQL backends (controller + cloud)
- Vue 3 frontends
- Redis real-time state layer
- MySQL history and audit trail
- MQTT device communication
- IoT firmware interfaces
Technical roadmap execution:
- Translate product goals into phased, sequenced engineering work
- Address technical debt before it becomes an incident
Code quality & engineering standards:
- Set the bar through deep PR reviews, pairing, and hands-on production contributions
- Establish and enforce engineering standards
- Ensure correctness where reliability is a safety requirement

Cross-cutting reliability responsibilities

Redis → GraphQL subscriptions → Pinia → Vue data flow
Evacuation routing algorithms
Device adoption and provisioning workflows
History and audit systems

Security posture responsibilities

SSO federation and session management
Input validation
Secrets management
Secure integration alongside security cameras and life-safety hardware (security is required)

Team enablement & leadership

Write clear technical specifications
Unblock engineers and lead retrospectives
Mentor and develop engineers; success measured by people growth as well as shipped code

What you’re looking for

Required

8+ years professional software engineering experience, including senior/lead roles
5+ years production experience with Node.js backends
Strong GraphQL API experience (Apollo Server or equivalent)
Strong Vue 3 / Composition API skills
Ability to review a Pinia store and quickly spot reactivity issues
Experience using Redis as a primary runtime datastore (not just caching)
Experience designing/debugging real-time systems (WebSockets, SSE, pub/sub)
Familiarity with MQTT and IoT communication protocols
Strong architectural judgment and pragmatic decision-making
Experience leading engineering teams of 5–10+ through product delivery
Demonstrated mentoring via coaching, pairing, and direct feedback

Strong plus

Experience with life-safety, industrial control, or other mission-critical systems
Embedded/firmware experience (ESP-IDF, C, or Rust on constrained hardware)
Kubernetes operational experience
Graph traversal and pathfinding algorithms
Playwright or large-scale end-to-end automation
BACnet, ONVIF, or building automation protocol experience

Challenges you’ll work on

Real-time evacuation routing under adversarial conditions including multi-floor graph topology, heterogeneous IoT devices, distributed systems, and latency-sensitive decision making

Engineering culture

Documented architecture, established conventions, thoughtful code reviews, and a craftsmanship/reliability-first mindset.

About SafeEVAC

SafeEVAC builds an intelligent evacuation management platform for life-safety decisioning in real time. The system uses multi-patented IoT exit signs to coordinate visual and audible guidance during emergencies while computing optimal evacuation routes based on threat positions, blocked exits, and building topology. It operates across embedded firmware, real-time distributed systems, and mission-critical software.

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