Founding Engineer

About the job The role You'll join as an equal partner to the senior backend engineer, sharing ownership of the backend so no single person is a bottleneck. This is a founding seat: you'll shape the architecture, not just follow it. What you'll do Design, build and scale the backend services that power partner matching. Own API design across an API-first platform. Build and tune search and retrieval on Elasticsearch. Integrate LLMs into the product (OpenAI today; Gemini on Vertex live; Bedrock and Azure AI next). Make architecture decisions with the founding team, and rebuild fast when something doesn't work. Work async with teammates in the US and Europe, owning goals end to end. What we're looking for Must-have 5–7 years building backend systems in Python that run at production scale. Hands-on Elasticsearch experience. Strong API design and experience with API-first architecture. At least one 0→1 journey as an early or founding engineer at a startup (team of 5–10 engineers). Strong computer science fundamentals. Strong plus LLM integration in production (OpenAI, Gemini, or similar). Nice to have Cloud and Kubernetes on AWS, Azure or GCP. Agentic workflows, or search and retrieval systems. Domain experience in partner tech (PRM/PSM), sales intelligence, or marketplace and matching systems. Is this you? You'll thrive here if you: Have built, scaled, or even failed at a real startup, and want to do it again with more ownership. Work best with a clear goal and the freedom to get there. "Here's the goal, let's check in next week" suits you. Think AI-first: you're happy to throw away what doesn't work and rebuild fast. Care more about equity, ownership and the scale journey than maximising cash. This probably isn't for you if you: Prefer clear structure, close guidance or a defined process. Have worked only at large companies or services firms. Haven't run systems in production at real scale.