Engineering Lead, Koinly

• We’re looking for someone who loves optimizing high-volume systems, tuning databases, and guiding senior engineers without getting buried in management overhead
• You get a kick out of taming big datasets and making complex systems run faster, cleaner, and more reliable
• You want direct impact in a lean team with no pointless meetings or standups
• You care about technical excellence and building for speed and longevity
• You want to work on a massive system and help shape the architecture of a product that powers a hyper-growth industry
• Proven experience building and maintaining data-intensive, large-scale, high-performance platforms
• Track record of solving performance bottlenecks and working with structured data at scale
• Strong expertise in Ruby/Ruby on Rails (or willingness to get up to speed fast)
• Deep understanding of data engineering principles: data modeling, ETL pipelines, stream processing
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (IaC), and monitoring tools
• Comfortable with 80% hands-on coding alongside leadership responsibilities
• Happy in an async-first environment
• Experience with high-volume systems, performance bottlenecks, and structured data
• Comfortable leading without layers: influencing direction without managing people full-time
• Happy working async with a globally distributed team
• Experience level: Senior (+7 years) with prior leadership experience

Desirable

• Own and optimize a Ruby + Postgres backend processing billions of crypto records. 80% hands-on, lean team, high autonomy, zero bloat. Pure scale and performance work
• We’re looking for an Engineering Lead (also known in some companies as a Tech Lead) who’s at their best scaling high-volume systems, optimizing databases, and digging deep into performance bottlenecks while guiding a small senior team
• This role is hands-on ~80% of the time, with ~20% focused on leadership, technical direction, and mentoring
• We’re a bootstrapped, hyper-growth startup in the crypto tax domain
• Our backend is pure Ruby on Rails, built by engineers who care deeply about craft, speed, and impact
• You’ll work directly with our founder (also a Ruby and Rails engineer) in a culture that values autonomy, deep work, and zero bureaucratic bloat
• Own and evolve the architecture and performance of our Ruby + PostgreSQL backend, processing billions (and billions) of records daily
• Design, build, and run large-scale, high-performance data platforms engineered for low latency and high availability
• Profile, tune, and squeeze every millisecond from systems that handle billions (and billions) of records across 900+ integrations
• Drive technical excellence by setting best practices, design patterns, and coding standards
• Review and approve technical designs and pull requests
• Support and empower your team of 5 senior engineers while staying ~80% hands-on
• Lead and guide debates to help reach consensus; once a decision is made, clearly communicate it back
• Collaborate across the project lifecycle: requirements, design, prototype, implementation, review, release, monitoring
• Collaborate async with product, design, marketing, and leadership to move fast without the meetings
• Contribute to the development and planning of our core roadmap
• Stay ahead of emerging trends to drive continuous improvement
• Help scale our platform used globally by crypto investors, traders, and tax professionals
• Report to: Engineering Manager
• Full-time (Contractor - B2B)
• Team size: 3-5 directs within a 10 person engineering team
• Main responsibilities: scaling high-volume systems, optimizing databases, and solving performance bottlenecks

• We usually respond within a week
• Start date: ASAP