Founding Forward

About the Role

We are seeking a Founding Forward-Deployed Engineer, an early-stage builder who will take raw ideas from empty repositories to production-grade systems within days. This is not a management position; it is a hands-on engineering role with ownership over end-to-end technical work and a clear trajectory toward CTO.

Our pace: We listen to user needs in the morning, align on priorities, and ship solutions to production by day's end.

Key Responsibilities

• Rapidly prototype and deploy working software across our full stack (Node.js, Python, frontend, mobile, cloud/DevOps).
• Design and build AI agent systems at the core of our products, including evaluation harnesses to verify performance.
• Create media-provenance services and APIs for real customer environments.
• Collaborate directly with early users to gather requirements and deliver solutions quickly.
• Makes critical architecture decisions that define our technical foundation and mentor new teammates.
• Leverage AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) as force multipliers while maintaining rigorous code review standards.

What You Bring

• A strong computer science foundation in data structures, algorithms, and systems fundamentals.
• Proven experience operating production-scale backend systems with on-call responsibilities using Node.js or Python frameworks.
• Solid object-oriented design skills; writing clean, readable code where commit history tells a clear story.
• Experience engaging directly with customers/stakeholders to translate requirements into engineering tasks.
• Comfort working in an early-stage environment with high ownership, limited specifications, and shifting priorities.
• A pragmatic approach: shipping imperfect solutions now rather than perfect ones later.
• Strong communication skills for collaborating effectively with non-technical partners.