Tech Lead - Storyteller Core Platform
Remote - Bulgaria
Why us?
🇧🇬 Up to BGN 166,000 per year on a full time, contractor contract
🌎 Fully remote working anywhere in Bulgaria!
✨ Exciting high growth product, relied on by leading global sports brands
💻 Working with the latest hardware, tech stack and tools
This role is focused on our Core product which powers our Mobile and Web SDKs by delivering high-performance APIs, analytics ingestion that handles 60 million events per day and robust media processing that allow clients to deliver their content to their users easily and efficiently. This product has been in production for the past 5 years and boasts around 40-50 sports clients. That being said, we still value being up to date and upcoming projects include upgrading to .NET 10 and moving our asset processing stack to a flexible container-based setup.
About us
Storyteller is a high growth B2B SaaS platform, which allows companies to integrate Stories into their owned and operated platforms. Popularized by Instagram and Snapchat, Stories are perfectly suited for boosting user engagement, audience retention, and driving advertising revenue.
Our end‑to‑end platform gives companies a best‑in‑class Stories experience in days with native iOS, Android, and Web SDKs, publishing tools, analytics, and ad support.
We work with many globally recognised clients, particularly within sport, so if you're a sporting fan this could be a great fit!
Responsibilities
We think you’ll be a great fit if you’ve worked in fast-moving startup/high-growth environments where autonomy, adaptability, and ownership are part of the culture.
Own outcomes, not just tickets
Lead a squad of 2–4 engineers (mix of senior/junior) to deliver measurable product impact.
Set clear goals and success metrics (e.g., latency/reliability/adoption), break work into small, reversible slices, and ship on a steady cadence.
Design and build production systems
Architect and implement .NET services/APIs with SQL Server for a multi‑tenant B2B SaaS platform.
Make pragmatic trade‑offs: idempotent writes, rate limiting, caching/ETag, indexing and query shaping, back‑pressure, and failure‑mode handling.
Operate what you build
Instrument services with logs/metrics/traces; hold the line on p95/p99 performance and availability SLOs.
Run incident reviews that produce systemic fixes and documentation (runbooks, dashboards).
Prioritise for the business
Partner with PM/Design/Customer teams to translate goals into scope; cut or resequence work when data changes.
Keep stakeholders aligned with concise updates, risks, and owner/dates.
Create clarity and accountability
Set explicit expectations with your reports; give direct feedback; follow through with support and check‑ins.
Use lightweight mechanisms - PR templates, decision records, checklists - to make accountability routine.
Grow people and the codebase
Mentor engineers via pairing, reviews, and 1:1s; create growth plans and celebrate momentum.
Keep standards high: tests where they matter, clear interfaces, and intentional debt management.
Leverage AI effectively
Use AI assistants to accelerate boilerplate and documentation, and verify outputs with tests and metrics.
Help the team adopt safe practices (no secrets, anonymised data, prompt discipline, simple evals).
Collaborate across the product suite
Work with our iOS/Android/Web SDK teams to ensure that backend APIs and contracts are stable, well-documented, and easy to integrate.
Support enterprise client integrations (often in sport), balancing reliability with delivery speed.
Hire and onboard
Contribute to interviews and rubrics; onboard new teammates with clear goals, docs, and a first‑week win.
Qualifications
Must‑haves
Technical leadership: you’ve led a small team (2–4 engineers) to ship production software, setting direction, unblocking work, and owning outcomes end‑to‑end.
Practical problem solving: you start from constraints and business goals, enumerate options, make trade‑offs explicit, and choose the smallest reversible step that works.
Clear, direct communication: you set crisp expectations with reports, write succinct PRs/decision records, and give kind‑but‑candid feedback that changes behaviour.
Ownership & accountability: you finish hard things, leave systems better than you found them (tests, telemetry, docs), and make accountability routine rather than personal.
Flexibility & product sense: you can cut scope to hit outcomes, re‑prioritise quickly when data changes, and keep stakeholders aligned.
Learning mindset & AI fluency: you adopt new tools fast (including AI assistants) and verify outputs with tests/metrics, respecting privacy and data safety.
Nice to have
Cloud & infra: Azure (or equivalent), CI/CD, feature flags, safe rollouts/rollbacks.
Experience across media/SaaS, SDKs, or high‑throughput event ingestion.
C# / .NET expertise: strong experience with modern .NET (.NET 8+), building and operating Web APIs; comfortable with Minimal APIs or controllers.
SQL Server depth: confident with schema design, indexing, query shaping, and concurrency (transactions, isolation levels, deadlocks, idempotency).
Interest in sport and fan engagement (helpful, not required).
We value capability and trajectory over checklists. If you’re close on several of these and excited about the role, we’d like to hear from you.
Recruitment Process
We keep the loop practical and fast. Most steps are remote. We aim to complete everything in 7–10 days.
Step 1 - Intro with the hiring manager (30 min)
Role, product area, expectations for leading a 2-4 person squad, and your interests. No coding.
Step 2 - Paid take home
A tiny .NET 8 + SQL Server repo task plus two short written pieces: a Kickoff Memo and a leadership simulation response. AI tools are welcome; we care how you verify outputs.
Step 3 - Review + pairing + interview (75-90 min)
Walk through your submission, pair to extend it, and discuss leadership and decision making. We use anchored rubrics and share clear feedback.