Lead Software Engineer

About CloudChef

CloudChef’s autonomous cooking platform replaces human skill and judgment in cooking with AI, sensors, and appliance actuators democratizing access to the world’s best foods.

Our low-cost, easy-to-install upgrade on existing kitchen appliances enables low-skilled, contextless labor to replicate Michelin-star dishes more accurately than Michelin-star kitchens themselves.

Top institutional caterers, meal kit companies and hotels are using CloudChef to license and cook dishes from across the world without the need for skilled labor.

We are based in Palo Alto, California backed by several marquee investors like Claire Hughes Johnson(COO of Stripe), Rocketship.vc, Tom Colicchio, etc.

🚀 While our initial focus is on commercial kitchens, our long-term goal is to make any dish from anywhere accessible to anyone.

Imagine being able to eat Gordon Ramsay’s burgers in San Jose or even your grandma’s favorite dish from half-way across the world!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSilM6XoWek

The Role

As a lead software engineer, you will head development for the Kitchen Operating System (Kitchen OS) - the central orchestration and scheduling software. It is responsible for converting a kitchen production plan into atomic tasks that are scheduled and managed at different appliances/areas in the kitchen.

The operating system monitors the kitchen appliances through digital twins, schedules atomic tasks to ensure the kitchen production plan runs on time. To do this it constantly communicates with a host of IoT devices using a concurrent Python based architecture system.

In addition, you will also manage development of Order Management Interface (OMI) - a set of web interfaces that allows users to plan and manage cooking schedules and inventory by interfacing with our kitchen operating system.

In this role, you will -

• Architect and Lead Development: Design, develop, and maintain the core Kitchen OS. Continuously evaluate and evolve the system architecture to meet scaling needs and incorporate emerging technologies.
• Technical Leadership: Provide technical direction for all aspects of the Kitchen OS. Make high-level design choices and dictate technical standards, including coding standards, tools, and platforms.
• System Optimization and Scaling: Analyse and optimise system performance, scalability, and reliability as we deploy to an increasing number of clients. Implement advanced concurrency patterns and distributed systems concepts.
• Team Leadership: Build and lead a high-performing engineering team. Mentor junior engineers, foster a culture of innovation, and drive engineering best practices.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work closely with product managers, UX designers, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into technical specifications.
• Code Quality and Best Practices: Establish and maintain high standards for code quality, testing, and documentation. Implement robust CI/CD pipelines and monitoring systems.
• Research and Innovation: Stay abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies. Evaluate and incorporate new tools and methodologies to enhance the Kitchen OS capabilities.
• Manage the engineering team to deliver features for the Order Management Interface.

About you -

• 5+ years as an engineer at a product/tech-driven company. Startup experience is ideal.
• Proven experience architecting and building large-scale, distributed systems.
• Expert-level proficiency in Python, with deep understanding of concurrency models and multiprocessing.
• Understanding of front-end technologies (React) and back-end systems (Node.js, MongoDB).
• Experience building systems, both on-premise and on cloud infrastructure, that can support complex integrations
• Ability to move fast in response to new insights, while having competing priorities or deadlines
• Strong communication skills and ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Use high agency responsibly

Our tech stack -

• Kitchen Operating System - Concurrent Python Architecture
• Order Management Interface - React, Node.js
• Databases - MongoDB and GraphQL
• IoT communication - MQTT and WebSockets
• ML - evolving stack
• Others - Android(kotlin)

Compensation -

$150k - $180k (Cash) + Disproportionate equity

Location -

Palo Alto, CA

The Team

CloudChef was founded by Nikhil, Atish, and Mohit - friends from IIT Bombay, to originally solve their own problem - living away from home, couldn’t eat from thier favorite restaurants or even home food.

We have intentionally kept a small team. We believe that we can de-risk our business most effectively at this stage by being a small team of driven builders - who take ownership of large chunks of work.

The core team members of CloudChef are Nikhil, Mohit, Atish, Sikander, Georgi, Prateek