Founding Engineer
$72,000–$96,000 year
RemoteBrazil
Job Summary
Audit, improve, and take full ownership of the product's existing codebase and architecture, then build and ship features end-to-end using Python, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, WebSockets, and Next.js. Design and evolve the database schema, maintain real-time features, and own infrastructure and deployment workflows on Railway. Write comprehensive unit and integration tests to ensure reliability and long-term maintainability. Work hand-in-hand with the founder daily to translate vision into shipped product, setting technical direction and engineering best practices as the team's first engineer. Collaborate closely with the founder in a hybrid rhythm, with frequent in-person visits during early months, while mentoring developers as the engineering team grows.
Required Qualifications
- 5–6 years of full-stack software engineering experience
- strong system architecture knowledge across front-end and back-end
- Strong professional experience with Python
- Strong professional experience with FastAPI
- Strong professional experience with SQLAlchemy
- Strong professional experience with Alembic
- Strong professional experience with WebSockets
- Strong professional experience with modern React frameworks such as Next.js
- Strong SQL skills
- hands-on experience designing, querying, and optimizing PostgreSQL databases
- Experience designing relational databases
- experience managing schema changes through Alembic migrations
- Experience building or maintaining real-time applications using WebSockets
- Proven experience writing and maintaining unit and integration tests
- Experience deploying and operating applications in cloud environments
- Founder mindset
- Experience building products from 0 to 1 in startup environments
- Organized, proactive, and highly logical communicator
- Strong written and verbal English
- Location: remote, based in Brazil
- Expect a hybrid rhythm for some time in the early months
Desired Qualifications
- experience with Railway
- Basic knowledge of AI/LLM technologies (e.g., OpenAI APIs, prompt engineering, retrieval, or AI-powered product features)
- Personal projects or side builds that show initiative and range
- Regular use of AI tools in day-to-day engineering work
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