
Ask HN: What should this role be called? - meric
The duties are:<p>* Look for performance and scalability problems for two products caused by inefficient code, and then fix them.<p>* Continually refactor code written by others in the company for two products.<p>* Responsible for the hardware-architecture of two systems. (e.g. where servers are located, how many, which database..., what ports,...)<p>* Setting up a process of continuous integration and unit testing.<p>* Review code written by others in the company.<p>* Communicate and coordinate with (outsourced) sysadmins who manage our servers.<p>My employer wants to call this "product management" since I'm "managing products" but that is incorrect, so I want to suggest a less incorrect name to label all these tasks. Product management involves what to build into a product to satisfy user demand; the above tasks include none of that. He is reluctant to call me "Lead Engineer" because there are already engineers leading each product; and 3 lead engineers out of 5 seemed a lot.<p>Basically, the technical founder of the startup I work for wants to transition into sales and needs someone to (slowly) replace him.<p>I might as well ask what would you expect the salary for this position be? I won't be doing all of it at first because I'm not experienced in all of those tasks; he plans to spend several months or more for training and transition.
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lutusp
On the basis of the first two lines, I would have said "Interface Engineer."
The issue, the problem, is the interface between the two products. So --
Interface Engineer.

But as I read on, I see it's a bit more complicated than that. So maybe my
suggestion isn't ideal.

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meric
The two products share some code but the systems aren't connected. I mis-
worded the first point...

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fitandfunction
Principal Engineer or Lead Engineer. In particular, you want someone with
experience in very early-stage startups (where they might have been
responsible for some hardware decisions).

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meric
Thanks.

"very early-stage": Is it relevant we currently have over 100,000 users and
are already profitable?

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fitandfunction
The point about the "very early stage" is that it's unlikely for _one single_
person to have all the skills you want _unless_ they had no other choice, i.e.
they were the first or second engineer in a startup.

So, to find one person to satisfy your job description, look for someone who
was an early engineer at a startup.

Or, hire two people (who will usually cost you less money).

In SV, the recommendation is to hire that _one special person_ , but I'm not
so sure. This is particularly true if you live outside a hub (SV, Seattle,
etc) and this type of employee becomes even more rare.

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xcirrian
For me the position is more like a dev Team Director coz it's involved with
front-end, backend, testing, performance and etc.

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byoung2
Maybe something like Performance Optimization Engineer, given the amount of
code review and refactoring involved.

