Founding Backend and Platform Software Engineer

About the Company Our client is building an AI-enabled engineering services platform for civil, structural, and MEP firms, partnering with established engineering businesses, and then building purpose-built software and shared infrastructure that make their teams faster and more capable. The company is small, venture-backed, and early enough that foundational technical decisions are still being made, with an opportunity to work with direct leadership as the platform is built from the ground up. The Opportunity This is a foundational software engineering role with Senior/Staff-level scope across architecture, backend and platform coding, cloud infrastructure, developer experience, distributed systems, and production reliability. You will own the technical substrate used by forward-deployed engineers and the firms they support: the systems applications run on, the path from commit to production, the architecture for onboarding new firms, and the operating practices that keep everything reliable as the business scales. This is not a traditional DevOps or SRE position. You will define architecture, write production software, make consequential platform decisions, and create the first version of systems and practices where no runbook exists. What You'll Own Platform architecture: design and evolve the shared platform across forward-deployed teams and partner firms, including tenant isolation, identity, permissions, integrations, APIs, and data flows.Production software: write and review backend and platform code across services, internal tools, integrations, and the infrastructure surrounding them.Delivery and developer experience: own the path from commit to production, including CI/CD, preview environments, testing infrastructure, local development, and repeatable release workflows.Distributed systems and reliability: define service boundaries, failure modes, observability, incident response, and reusable patterns that make every new firm easier to onboard.Technical direction: make pragmatic build-versus-buy decisions, establish engineering standards, and improve systems while the company is actively operating and growing.Bespoke-to-platform leverage: identify which customer-specific solutions should become shared capabilities and prevent the platform from turning into disconnected consulting work.Cross-functional execution: work directly with the CTO, forward-deployed engineers, and domain experts; troubleshoot production issues, unblock implementations, and occasionally travel when needed. What We're Looking For Typically 5-10+ years of professional software engineering experience, with meaningful ownership of production systems. Actual level will be based on scope and judgment, not title alone.Strong software engineering fundamentals and the ability to reason about architecture, distributed systems, APIs, data flows, security, reliability, and operational tradeoffs.Experience operating systems in production and judgment shaped by real incidents, scale constraints, imperfect information, and competing business needs.A record of broad ownership in an earlier-stage or high-growth company, ideally Series B/C or earlier. Founding, first-platform-hire, or Staff-level scope is especially relevant.The ability to move between architecture and implementation: define the approach, write the code, debug the system, and improve the engineering practice around it.High communication ability and EQ. You explain tradeoffs clearly, ask good questions, receive feedback without ego, and build trust across technical and nontechnical teams.Comfort working on-site in New York City five days per week in a small, high-accountability environment. Relevant Experience Helpful backgrounds include internal developer platforms, multitenant products, enterprise integrations, identity and access management, observability, applied AI, distributed backend systems, or customer-facing engineering. Strong technical judgment, systems thinking, and evidence of ownership matter more than experience with every tool in the current stack. What This Role Is Not It is not primarily Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, or cloud administration.It is not a ticket-based operations role focused only on keeping existing infrastructure running.It is not an architecture-only position; the person in this seat will remain hands-on and write production code.Kubernetes expertise, prior M&A integration experience, AEC industry experience, and exact stack match are not required. Technology The current stack includes React and Next.js on the frontend, Kotlin for core backend services, Python for data and AI services, and multitenant infrastructure on AWS. How the Team Works The team values people who are humble, hungry, and smart: low ego, intellectually honest, strong in judgment and communication, and motivated by ownership. The pace is urgent and accountability is high, but the culture is not built around extreme or unsustainable hours. Compensation and Benefits Expected base salary of $200,000-$300,000, depending on experience and scope.Profit-interest equity participation with dilution protection.Full healthcare benefits.Direct access to the CTO and significant influence over platform architecture and engineering practices from an early stage.