Founding Software Engineer

Mission-driven giving platform seeks a hands-on Founding Engineer to build the trusted tech connecting grassroots changemakers with the people who back them. About Rayz Rayz is a mission-driven, two-sided platform connecting independent grassroots changemakers with the supporters who back them. Changemakers share authentic, browser-captured video updates ("Captured Lives") and receive direct donations, turning scattered local trust into visible, recurring support. We're investor-backed, MVP with early conversions, and building toward a growth phase. The team is small and moves fast, the mission is real, and the technical bar is high because we handle donor money and personal data. The role We're hiring our Founding Engineer, the person who builds Rayz. You'll spend most of your time writing code: shipping features, fixing what breaks, and making the architecture calls as you go. You'll inherit a modern, well-built MVP (strict TypeScript, row-level security on every table, disciplined secrets handling) and take it from a hand-held cohort product to something reliable, secure and ready to scale. The job is to build on it, not rebuild it. The near-term product is a mobile-first web app. The roadmap moves to native mobile, and you'll build that too, so hands-on native experience is a real requirement, not a bonus. You'll work directly with the founders, shape the product as much as the code, and grow into the technical lead as the team grows. What you'll build on and own The full product stack: The mobile-first web app, the video pipeline (Mux), payments and payouts (Stripe, Wise), and the data model (Supabase / Postgres with row-level security).Native mobile: Taking Rayz from mobile web to a production native app.Security and privacy in the code: Data isolation, GDPR, Gift Aid and the Fundraising Regulator Code, built in from the start. This is non-negotiable when a platform holds and moves donor money.Reliability under real load: Keeping the product fast and correct as the cohort grows into a marketplace.Shipping what moves the numbers: Working with the founders to turn our thesis and investor metrics into what gets built next, with a clear view of what drives conversion and retention.Pragmatic build-vs-buy: We lean on a managed-service stack. We buy well, and we're allergic to over-engineering.The engineering foundations: Setting the standard for review, testing and documentation, and helping shape the first hires who join you. What we're looking for A senior, hands-on full-stack engineer who loves to build and has shipped real products end to end, ideally as an early engineer at a startup.Deep TypeScript and modern React / Next.js (App Router, server components) on a serverless platform.Strong Postgres data modelling, including row-level security and multi-tenant data isolation. This is how we keep donor and changemaker data safe.Payments experience with Stripe, ideally in a regulated, fintech-adjacent or donations context: webhooks, idempotency, subscriptions, money-movement correctness.A security-first instinct: you treat security as a feature, not a chore.Product sense: you care whether what you ship actually moves the metrics.Native mobile experience (React Native, or native iOS and Android): you've taken native apps to production before.Comfort with ambiguity, startup pace, high ownership and low ego. Bonus signals Video or streaming experience (Mux, WebRTC or the browser MediaRecorder API) and mobile-web depth. Experience in charity, impact or fintech, and any exposure to fundraising regulation or Gift Aid. The details Reports to the CEO. Our first engineering hire, with a clear path to leading the team as it grows.Competitive salary plus meaningful founding equity. Flexible cash/equity mix for the right person.Remote, with regular in-person collaboration at our investor's office near Tottenham Court Road, London (can be flexible for the right candidate). Open to full-time or fractional for the right person. Let's talk about what works.