Lead Software Engineer - Rails

🚀 About Us

We’re Bolt.new by StackBlitz!

We’re the team that brought you WebContainers, the first-of-its-kind technology that made it possible to run Node.js right inside your browser. That breakthrough kicked off our journey in 2019, and it’s what powers the blazing-fast online IDE used by over 1 million developers every month.

But we didn’t stop there. We doubled down on everything we learned and built Bolt.new — the fastest way to go from idea to production without writing traditional code. It’s a next-gen, AI-powered app builder that helps you create, edit, and deploy full-stack web and mobile apps instantly, right in your browser. No installs. No setup. Just smart automation and instant dev environments that let you move at the speed of thought.

We’re a fully remote team, globally distributed, deeply collaborative, and seriously passionate about building the future of software development.

This is your chance to join a small team with a big vision. If you love shipping fast, solving real problems, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, we’d love to meet you.

✨ About This Opportunity

At Bolt, we are changing how people can build software. One of the fastest growing startups ever is looking for exceptional talent!

This role is perfect for someone who excels at building robust, scalable backend systems. If you're an exceptional Rails backend engineer capable of designing and implementing APIs, services, and data models that power our platform, and you have a great eye for providing value to customers while writing quality, maintainable, and performant code, we'd love to hear from you. We are looking for pragmatic builders that can ship!

🛠️ How You'll Contribute 

Lead and Empower Your Team

• Coach and develop engineers through code reviews, pairing, 1:1s, and clear, actionable feedback.
• Set technical direction and quality standards, balancing pragmatic delivery with long-term maintainability and managed tech debt.
• Translate company goals into an executable roadmap with Product, Design, and AI partners, and coordinate cross-team architecture decisions.
• Build a safe, high-performing team culture by hiring well, addressing performance issues early, and creating space to experiment and learn.
• Unblock the team and improve velocity by clarifying requirements, advocating for resources, improving processes, and pushing back on unrealistic timelines.

Team Development

• Conduct performance reviews and own career development for core team members
• Hold regular 1:1s to support growth, remove blockers, and provide feedback
• Make hiring decisions and address performance issues proactively
• Build a high-performing, autonomous team culture

Coordination

• Assign team members across features based on skills, capacity, and priorities
• Participate in coordination meetings with other Team Leads
• Regular 1:1s with Head of Engineering to align on priorities and resources
• Run weekly core team meetings for knowledge sharing

AI-Native Development

• Champion AI coding tools and model effective usage
• Build AI-powered core platform features and intelligent runtime capabilities
• Dogfood Bolt.new daily and drive product improvements

💡 Qualifications

Technical

• 10+ years full-stack/systems development, 3+ years leadership
• Strong Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and Typescript ecosystem knowledge
• Experience designing and scaling REST/GraphQL APIs serving millions of requests
• Understanding of distributed systems and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Cloudflare or Azure)
• Proven ability to optimize backend performance, caching strategies, and database design
• Experience with containerization, virtualization, and sandboxing concepts
• Knowledge of load balancing, rate limiting, and designing for high availability
• Experience with developer tooling, build systems, and runtime optimization
• Track record of architectural decisions balancing speed and maintainability
• Daily user of AI coding assistants (Cursor, Copilot, Claude)
• Experience building AI-integrated applications and platform features

Leadership

• Performance reviews, career development, and difficult conversations
• Growing engineers to senior/staff+ levels
• Hiring backend/platform engineers
• Building remote team culture
• Coaching mindset with a balance of individual and business needs

Skills

• Experience designing scalable, performant runtime systems
• Strong architectural thinking for systems handling scale and growth
• Excellent communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Pragmatic mindset: ship MVPs, bias toward action, match quality to business need
• Business thinking: tie technical work to clear outcomes
• Collaborative: knowledge sharing and unblocking others is core work

📌 A Few Notes

• You do not need a college degree to apply

• You do not need to be located in the U.S. — we’re remote-friendly

• You do not need to meet every qualification listed above. If this role excites you, we want to hear from you.