How to apply for Lead Engineer

About Jacobson Consulting Applications

Jacobson Consulting Applications (JCA) is a specialized consulting firm that builds and scales the Vivian platform, a SaaS product used by clients to manage their business operations. Working at JCA means joining a small, agile team where you can have a direct impact on a growing product and help shape its future.

About the role

As the Lead Engineer, you will be the technical backbone of the Vivian platform, responsible for scaling it to meet growing client demands while maintaining quality, stability, and performance. You'll split your time between leading a small engineering team, diving into hands-on coding, and ensuring operational discipline to deliver a secure and reliable SaaS solution.

A typical day

A typical day might involve a morning stand-up with your engineering team, followed by hands-on coding to address a critical performance bottleneck. In the afternoon, you might collaborate with product managers on roadmap priorities, review code, and plan for upcoming scalability improvements. You'll also monitor system health and respond to any operational issues that arise, ensuring the platform remains reliable for clients.

Who Jacobson Consulting Applications is looking for

• Proven experience leading small engineering teams while remaining hands-on with code, ideally in a SaaS or platform environment.
• Strong background in scaling web applications, with expertise in performance optimization, security, and reliability.
• Ability to bridge product strategy and technical execution, making architectural decisions that align with business goals.
• Operational discipline: experience with CI/CD, monitoring, incident response, and maintaining high uptime for client-facing platforms.

Tips for this application

• Highlight specific examples of scaling a SaaS platform, including metrics like uptime improvements, performance gains, or cost reductions.
• Emphasize your experience leading small teams while actively contributing code—JCA values leaders who don't shy away from hands-on work.
• Research the Vivian platform (if publicly available) and mention how you would approach its scaling challenges in your application.
• Demonstrate operational discipline by detailing your experience with DevOps practices, monitoring tools, and incident management.
• Tailor your resume to show a blend of technical leadership and execution, using keywords from the job description like 'scalability', 'stability', and 'client growth'.

What to cover in your cover letter

["Your hands-on technical leadership style and how you've successfully balanced team leadership with coding.", 'Specific instances where you scaled a SaaS platform, including the challenges faced and the outcomes achieved.', 'Your approach to maintaining operational excellence (security, reliability, performance) in a remote environment.', "Why you're excited about JCA's mission and the opportunity to evolve the Vivian platform for client growth."]

Research before applying

• Explore JCA's website and any public information about the Vivian platform to understand its purpose, features, and client base.
• Look up the backgrounds of JCA's leadership team to understand their technical and business priorities.
• Search for any press releases, case studies, or client testimonials that highlight the platform's impact and growth trajectory.
• Check if JCA has any engineering blogs, open-source contributions, or tech talks that reveal their tech stack and engineering culture.

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• How you would approach scaling the Vivian platform to support increasing client loads while maintaining performance.
• Your experience leading small engineering teams: how you mentor, delegate, and ensure code quality.
• A time you made a critical technical decision that impacted product strategy—what was the outcome?
• How you handle operational incidents and ensure reliability in a remote, distributed team.
• Your familiarity with modern SaaS architecture, including cloud services, microservices, and security best practices.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Focusing only on managerial experience without demonstrating recent hands-on coding skills.
• Giving generic examples of scaling without tying them to SaaS or platform-specific challenges.
• Neglecting to mention operational aspects like security, monitoring, or incident response, which are key to this role.