Director of Product Engineering

Company:
Timbuk2 AI
Location:
Cape Town (Hybrid)
Compensation:
Executive-Level Salary +
Significant Foundational Equity Stake
Our Mission: Mapping the Unmapped

Timbuk2 AI is building the market intelligence engine for Africa's informal economies. We transform real-world, often-hidden data (from informal retail, micro-enterprises, and high-movement zones) into actionable insights. We empower businesses with the tools to drive location planning, retail strategy, and targeted engagement in the markets that everyone else ignores.

The Role: This is Not a 'Business as Usual' Job

This is a "greenfield-on-a-brownfield" mission. We've built a V1 platform that has proven our market, but it was not built for scale or speed. It was built with a "PDF-generation" mindset, not a modern, reactive UI mindset.

We are not looking for a "process manager" to just oversee tickets. We are looking for an
AI-First Architect and Player-Coach
to partner directly with the CEO, take "truth-teller" ownership of our entire tech stack, and re-architect it for the "Vercel-Native" generation.

You are the
single-threaded owner
for technical quality, architecture, and velocity. Your mission is to fix the "sins of the past" (a slow, monolithic backend) and build a world-class, "Data-First" platform that is fast, reliable, and "just works."

Core Responsibilities

• Architectural "Truth-Teller":
  You will own the technical roadmap. You will
  immediately
  diagnose our performance bottlenecks, stop the "migration of the problem," and implement a scalable, decoupled, UX-first architecture.
• AI-Native Leadership:
  You will be the "Head of AI" and "Head of Eng" in one. You will lead the development of our core LLM-based insights engine, championing
  Context Engineering
  and using AI-native tools (
  Cursor
  , etc.) to 10x the team's output.
• A-Player "Player-Coach":
  You will ship production-grade Python code. You will lead, mentor, and level-up our engineering team. You will be the "bar-setter" for quality and accountability, managing
  in
  A-Players and managing
  out
  B-Players.
• Product & Velocity Obsession:
  You will be the CEO's key partner in translating product vision into a high-velocity, high-quality, MVP-driven roadmap. You will obsess over shipping, and you will cringe at slow load times.

NON-NEGOTIABLE Requirements (The "Who")

We are looking for a specific archetype. You
must
have:

1. 7+ Years of Experience:
   A minimum of 7 years in engineering, with a clear progression to a
   Principal, Staff, or Director-level
   role.
2. The "Monolith-Slayer" (Proof):
   You have
   personally
   led the re-architecture of a monolithic application into a performant, decoupled microservices system. You must be able to diagram this from memory.
3. The "AI-First" Builder (Proof):
   You have
   personally shipped
   a production-level product where
   Generative AI/LLMs
   were
   core
   to the user value, not just a minor feature.
4. Hands-On Python Expert:
   You are a "player-coach" who can write world-class, production-grade Python (FastAPI, Django, etc.) and set the standard for the team.
5. Product-Obsessed:
   You are a UX-minded architect. You understand that the backend
   serves
   the frontend. You are disgusted by anything that makes a user wait.
6. "AI-Native" Fluency:
   You don't just "know about" AI tools. You
   use
   Cursor
   (or similar) daily and are fluent in the "Vercel-Native" stack (Vercel, , Serverless, Neon/KV).

Why You Should Join Timbuk2 AI

1. Massive Impact:
   You will be solving a world-first problem—creating the definitive intelligence engine for Africa's $1 Trillion informal economy.
2. Foundational Equity:
   This is a Director-level role with a significant, life-changing equity stake. You are not an employee; you are an owner.
3. Total Autonomy:
   You have a direct mandate from the CEO. There is no bureaucracy. Just find the truth, and build.