AI-Native Product Lead & Editor Architect (TypeScript/Node.js)

About ThriveCart: ThriveCart is a powerful platform used by over 50,000 people worldwide to generate over $5B in sales. It includes a learning management system (LMS), affiliate management, cart and checkout functionality, and integrates with everything you use. The platform is known for its simple, clean UI and high conversion rates for online businesses.

The company is backed by LTV SaaS Growth Funds, growing rapidly with a 64% YoY growth from 2022-2023.

Job Overview:

We’re building a best-in-class editor for ecommerce conversion, and we need someone to lead the team through it—not just staff it. This is a hybrid role: half technical team lead, half AI-native product thinker.

You won’t just use AI tools to write code faster. You’ll understand how AI behaves inside a page builder—what it should generate, suggest, or automate for someone building a landing page or funnel to convert better—and you’ll propose and build those features yourself. You’ll also run the team: unblock engineers, make the calls when priorities conflict, and be the person who ships when no one else can.

This is not a hand-off role, nor is it a pure individual contributor (IC) role. You’re accountable for the team’s output and your own.

What You’ll Own:

• Technical direction for the editor, including how AI shows up inside the product (generation, layout suggestions, content assist, personalization—whatever moves conversion)
• The team’s delivery: sprint output, unblocking, code review quality, and stepping in to build when the team is stretched
• Incident response and production health for the editor
• Ramping and mentoring the rest of the team, including their AI tool usage

What You’ll Do:

Team Leadership & Delivery

• Own sprint planning, task breakdown, and prioritization for the Editor 2.0 team
• Unblock engineers daily—technical blockers, ambiguous requirements, cross-team dependencies
• Personally pick up critical-path work when the team is short-handed—this role carries load, it doesn’t just delegate it
• Run point on code review standards and technical decisions for the team’s scope

AI-Native Product Judgment

• Understand how AI features behave inside a visual page/funnel builder—not just “use AI to write code faster,” but “what should an AI content-suggestion feature do when a merchant drops a new block into their page, and does it actually help them convert?”
• Propose concrete features: what AI should generate, what it should leave alone, where it fails silently vs. loudly
• Push back on AI-feature ideas that sound good in a slide but won’t survive contact with real page-building workflows or move conversion

Code Quality & Testing

• Write unit and integration tests as part of feature work, not as an afterthought
• Participate actively in code reviews—give thoughtful feedback, act on feedback you receive
• Identify edge cases and risks during planning, not after deployment

AI-Augmented Development

• Use AI coding tools daily—this is a baseline expectation, not a differentiator
• Set the standard for the team: what AI-assisted workflows actually save time vs. add cleanup work
• You understand everything you or the team ships—AI accelerates, it doesn’t absolve you of the review

What You Bring To This Role:

Technical Environment

Primary stack: TypeScript/Node.js for the new system you’ll build, and PHP 7.4/8+ with Laravel for the existing system you’ll maintain during the transition. Infrastructure: MariaDB, Redis, AWS (EC2, RDS, CloudWatch, SQS, S3), Docker, GitHub Actions CI/CD.

Must Haves

• 6+ years professional software engineering experience, with at least 1-2 years in a lead or de facto lead capacity—owned technical direction for a team, not just senior IC work
• Hands-on experience in PHP/Laravel
• Hands-on experience building consumer-facing web products at scale—page builders, website/funnel editors, or similarly complex WYSIWYG/visual editing tools strongly preferred
• Demonstrated track record shipping AI-powered product features, not just using AI coding tools
• Experience working directly with a product manager on roadmap and feature definition, not just executing tickets
• Comfortable being the primary escalation point for production issues on their product area

Success Metrics:

First 30 Days

• Ships their first meaningful feature to production and is running point on the team’s sprint cadence
• Has proposed at least one concrete AI-feature idea grounded in real conversion data, not just intuition

Ongoing / Steady-State

• The team ships against roadmap without the lead becoming the single point of failure—work continues if they’re out for a week
• At least one AI-native feature they drove goes from idea → shipped, with a measurable lift in conversion (or a clear, honest read on why it didn’t move the number)
• Engineers on the team are visibly leveling up their own AI-assisted workflows because of this person’s standards, not just their own output

What This Role Is Not:

• Not a pure people-manager role—this person writes code and ships features
• Not a “prompt AI tools all day” role—the AI fluency is table stakes, the differentiator is product judgment about AI inside the product
• Not a role for someone who needs a fully-scoped ticket queue—they should be generating the roadmap items together with the product manager, not just executing them