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Team Lead, Android Core Product - Santa Monica, CA, USA

Speechify - Remote - Remote - posted 2026-09-15

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Salary: USD 140,000 - 200,000 / annual

Speechify is a text-to-speech platform used by over 50 million people to convert PDFs, books, Google Docs, articles, and websites into audio. The company has ~200 employees globally in a fully distributed setting, with team members from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Stanford, and high-growth startups like Stripe and Vercel. You will lead the Android Core Product team, which owns the most-used text-to-speech app in the Google Play Store. This is a hands-on role where you remain a significant individual contributor while also elevating team execution and processes. Key responsibilities include: - Own major features end-to-end from decision through release, working closely with design - Maintain and improve reliability metrics for key features - Provide high-quality code reviews that help engineers learn - Unblock team members and identify when shared solutions should replace duplicated work - Improve release processes and reduce manual intervention - Shift verification left by growing automated testing coverage - Run planning sessions focused on decisions rather than clear work - Participate in cross-functional discussions with Product and Design, bringing engineering constraints early - Handle critical issues and provide nightly builds for QA - Mentor early-career engineers with appropriate learning opportunities - Drive process improvements when the team is ready to change how it works The role emphasizes that code you write remains a significant part of your impact—this is not a pure management track. You'll handle the work that doesn't happen on its own: consolidating duplicate solutions, deciding team standards, and managing the friction that comes with process change. Speechify is a flat organization where leadership emerges through technical excellence and consistent delivery. The company values work ethic, communication, and winning mentality. REQUIREMENTS: - 5+ years of software engineering experience, including time leading a team or owning a major surface while staying hands-on - Strong expertise in Kotlin, Kotlin Coroutines, Kotlin Flow, Dagger 2, MVVM, Clean Architecture, Background Services, Music Player Service, Android animations, Jetpack Navigation, and JUnit tests - Experience shipping and maintaining background audio or other long-running background work - Understanding of testing importance and how to write effective tests, including awareness of what cannot be covered by tests - Track record of introducing something to a team that stuck after you stopped pushing it, with honest assessment of the cost - Comfort with the unpopular aspects of leadership: asking people to change how they work and managing resulting friction - Ability to argue which changes need heavy review based on system behavior - Track record of building things your team actually used, not just tools that made you faster - Ability to describe how your team works with AI agents - Product design intuition, user empathy, and drive to push Android UI/UX beyond specifications - Self-drive to improve the app and codebase beyond outlined specs - Excellent communication skills BONUS: Open source Android contributions, iOS/Web/NodeJS experience.

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