Technical Lead (Freelance)

Instrument is a digitally native design and technology company built to help brands unlock their full potential. Since 2005, our 300+ team of makers, thinkers, and storytellers has partnered with leading brands like Google, Nike, Uber, ŌURA, and Eventbrite to craft digital experiences that create impact and drive results.

Unlike traditional agencies, we don’t just design—we build. Our work lives at the intersection of taste and technology, powered by curiosity, thoughtful curation, and a commitment to delivering the most fitting solution for every brief. We bring this to life across three core offerings: Brand, Marketing, and Product.

As a member of our freelance network, you’ll collaborate with our teams to bring bold ideas to life—whether launching new brands, building digital products, or shaping experiences that move people. We welcome collaborators from all backgrounds and experiences who share our curiosity, creativity, and care for craft.

We believe great work comes from diverse perspectives and shared purpose. If you’re passionate about learning, experimenting, and making work that matters, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re seeking a hands-on Technical Lead to architect, guide, and deliver the technical foundation for a new web platform centered around a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) search experience. You will partner closely with a Technical Director and Technical Producer while leading a small development team (Frontend + Backend) to build a secure, scalable, and high-performing AI-powered application.

You will define the technical vision, design the system architecture, and establish the infrastructure that enables the team to move quickly and confidently. This includes architecting the Vertex AI–powered search implementation, shaping the data ingestion and vectorization pipelines, and building the DevOps frameworks (CI/CD, Cloud Build, IAM strategy, staging/production environments) that support smooth delivery.

This is both a strategic and hands-on role. You’ll be the technical force multiplier—clearing blockers, ensuring quality, and guiding the team toward a robust, production-ready solution.

Contract Duration: January 5 – February 27 (40 hrs/week)

• Architect the end-to-end technical solution for a new web platform featuring a RAG-based search engine.
• Design the infrastructure and system blueprint on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including Vertex AI Search, Vector Search, and supporting services.
• Define the data ingestion, embedding, and indexing strategies to ensure accurate and high-performing search capabilities.
• Establish and maintain DevOps foundations including CI/CD pipelines, Cloud Build, environment setup, cross-project IAM, and deployment workflows.
• Partner with the Backend Developer to ensure APIs, endpoints, and middleware effectively connect the frontend application to AI services.
• Conduct architectural reviews, provide technical mentorship, lead code reviews, and ensure engineering best practices across the team.
• Collaborate with production partners to translate technical strategy into actionable plans, estimates, and milestones.
• Diagnose and resolve technical blockers swiftly to maintain development momentum.
• Ensure security, observability, scalability, and performance are core to the system design and implementation.

• 7+ years of hands-on engineering experience, including technical leadership on complex cloud-based builds.
• Deep expertise with Google Cloud Platform, including Vertex AI, Vertex AI Search, Google Cloud Storage (GCS), App Engine, service accounts, IAM, and GCP networking fundamentals.
• Proven experience designing or implementing RAG, vector search, or AI-powered search workflows.
• Strong system design skills—capable of turning ambiguous goals into clear, actionable technical architectures.
• Proficiency with DevOps tooling, CI/CD pipelines, automated deployments, and modern cloud infrastructure practices.
• Ability to guide developers, review code for quality and alignment with architecture, and mentor teams toward technical excellence.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to partner cross-functionally with producers, designers, and engineers.
• Experience working with Brightspot CMS is a nice to have. Including implementing custom content models, integrations, or frontend delivery workflows.

• The expected pay range for this role is $84-103 per hour
• Our company has three regional pay bands that it adheres to depending on your location, we reference them as US 1, US 2, and US 3.
• US 3 is our base pay. Examples of cities in US 3 are Portland, Houston and Miami.
• US 2 pay is 7.5% higher than US 3 to meet the market rates. Examples of cities in US 2 are Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle.
• US 1 pay is 15% higher than US 3 to meet market rates. Examples of cities in US 1 are ​​Brooklyn and San Francisco.
• If you are curious which region you are in, please apply and get connected with our recruiting team!