Head of Engineering

Who We Are

Have you struggled to reserve that coveted summer camping spot at a state park? Have you wondered why you’re stuck filling out a paper form to renew a permit? What about not being able to reserve your favorite pickleball court from your phone?

Kaizen Labs is redefining government technology and building solutions across parks & recreation, permitting, citizen engagement, and more. We recognize that incumbent software systems are inefficient and sometimes broken. That’s why we believe residents and public servants across America’s 85,000 government agencies deserve access to modern, trusted software that rivals what we use in our daily lives.

Kaizen’s software currently serves 25 million residents across the country. Some of our partners include the City of Santa Clarita, Vail Recreation District, and Pima County. Most recently, we launched day pass software for 20 million visitors across Maryland’s state parks. Here is a quick video capturing the essence of our work with Pima County, AZ!

Founded in 2022 and based in New York City, we’re backed by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. Our team of 25 (and growing) is eager to leave a lasting impact on the public services that are so critical to our health, safety, and wellness.

The Role

As our first Head of Engineering, you’ll be stepping into a hands-on leadership role where you’ll have the opportunity to shape the future of our Engineering team. Reporting directly to the co-founder and CEO, you will oversee a small but growing engineering team in a fast-paced, high-energy environment. You’ll be responsible for driving the execution of new features, enhancing the platform’s architecture to ensure scalability, and supporting our company’s culture of rapid, high-velocity execution.

In this role, you’ll wear multiple hats, balancing leadership with deep technical involvement. You’ll manage an evolving team, guiding them through both strategic and tactical challenges as we scale. You'll be a key decision-maker in developing and implementing technical architecture, making critical trade-offs that align with both short term goals and long term vision. We are looking for someone who can craft scalable, sustainable strategies to support the company’s growth trajectory while maintaining a focus on performance, reliability, and innovation.

Your leadership will be integral to building and nurturing a culture of collaboration and excellence within the engineering team, ensuring that we move quickly and make smart, future-proof decisions. This is a high impact role with the opportunity to directly influence Kaizen’s success, shaping both the technical direction and the overall company growth.

Technical Challenges Unique to Kaizen…

• Managing deployments as we scale our customers, ensuring our systems can handle increasing user loads and feature complexity.

• Solving technical challenges around integrating with external hardware such as QR code scanners, Apple Wallet, and cash registers, ensuring seamless interactions.

• Developing accessible and inclusive solutions for diverse user groups, including multilingual support.

• Creating software that aligns with our mission to improve communities and empower users, with a focus on making a real-world impact.

• Scaling and deploying the platform for thousands of local municipalities while building reusable, customizable components to meet unique needs.

• Ensuring a beautiful, intuitive, and high performance product experience for all users, balancing features with usability.

What You’ll Do…

• Lead and support engineering teams, ensuring everyone has clear roles, responsibilities, and a shared understanding of priorities.

• Be a mentor and guide to your team, helping individuals grow toward their goals, resolving conflicts, and cultivating a culture of accountability and ownership.

• Work closely with our CEO and co-founder as a trusted partner, helping keep the engineering team in sync and aligned with our broader goals, mission, and vision.

• Develop and refine engineering processes to ensure the timely delivery of high quality products and features, always in line with our company’s goals and priorities.

• Identify inefficiencies and gaps as we scale, implementing solutions that will grow with us and continue to support our team’s success.

• Design the platform’s architecture, ensuring it’s stable, secure, and scalable to meet the needs of our rapid growth.

• Use data and analytics to inform engineering priorities, optimize workflows, and respond to market shifts in real-time.

• Stay closely connected to Kaizen’s mission, helping maximize the impact of our platform and drive meaningful change for our customers. Our work goes beyond local recreation - as we scale, we aim to build a product that serves higher levels of government (like state parks) and a broader range of areas (such as permitting, licensing, DMVs, and transit).

• Build strong relationships with our customers, staying in tune with how they engage with our product, and using those insights to drive impactful product improvements as we scale.

You may be a good fit if you can…

• Have 10+ years of experience.

• Effectively manage multiple work streams, transitioning seamlessly between technical problem solving, strategic planning, and people management without compromising focus or quality.

• Deliver high-quality features quickly, taking ownership of the development process and ensuring production stability and operational reliability.

• Demonstrate technical expertise in scalable systems architecture, modern development methodologies, and cloud infrastructure to support engineering excellence and long-term scalability

• Optimize development processes to enable rapid iteration, including streamlining local development environments and refining CI/CD pipelines.

• Get involved in the details and enjoy staying hands-on with product work. You like writing code and staying technical while also being a strong leader

Strong candidates may also…

• Hold experience working at an early-stage startup

• Have experience solving complex technical challenges creatively, building new processes, and driving impactful initiatives.

• Have a background in parks and recreation technology or a related field.

• Managed and scaled engineering functions for teams of 10+ individuals with corresponding budgets.

💚 At Kaizen, we believe that great work starts with taking great care of our people. We’re building something meaningful, and that starts with a culture where people genuinely love to work. Here’s how we support you - in and out of the workplace:

🩺 Comprehensive Health Coverage

We offer Silver, Gold, and Platinum PPO plans through Oxford (United), with 85% of premiums covered for employees on the Platinum plan, with a $0 premium option

🏥 Dental, Vision & Financial Wellness

You’re covered with Guardian PPO dental and Beam vision plans - Kaizen pays 99% of premiums for employees and 50% for dependents. We also offer:

• 💳 Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA & Dependent Care FSA)

• 🛡️ $100,000 in fully paid life insurance

• 🏦 401(k) access through Guideline

🤰🏼 Parental Leave That Supports Families

Because time with your growing family matters.

• 🍼 16 weeks fully paid for birthing parents and 10 weeks paid for non-birthing parents

🗽 Everyday Support & Flexibility

• 🚆 $50/month toward your commute

• 🏡 One-time setup stipend (up to $750) for your home or NYC office

• 💪 $100/month for wellness or productivity

🎡 Perks That Make Life Better

• 🎉 $250/year for recreation - because fun matters

• 📚 $500/year for professional development - because growth does too

• 🍱 Expensed lunch three days a week when you're in the office

• 💻 Company-provided laptop

🌴 Time Off to Recharge

• 🌅 Unlimited PTO

• 🇺🇸 All federal holidays off

• ☃️ A company-wide winter break during the week of Christmas

Kaizen provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

We are committed to maintaining a supportive and inclusive environment for people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. We respect the varied identities, abilities, cultures, and traditions of the individuals who comprise our organization and recognize the value that different backgrounds and points of view bring to our organization.

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please email us at [email protected]. This information will be treated as confidential and used only to determine an appropriate accommodation for the interview process.