Founding Engineer, Backend & AI

Role overview Build the backend platform and AI inference systems behind a suite of grant-focused product workflows. As a founding engineer, you will own core architecture and delivery across model integration, document drafting, data infrastructure, and operational practices. The work calls for turning language model capabilities into dependable, source-grounded product features.

Responsibilities - Design the inference layer, including prompt construction, output validation, source attribution, and data-retention safeguards. - Build an end-to-end drafting pipeline covering document ingestion, voice-signature extraction, generation, and citation grounding. - Develop and operate a PostgreSQL platform on AWS, with observability, audit logging, and tenant isolation. - Establish engineering practices for code review, testing, deployment cadence, and on-call support. - Make and document technical trade-offs across APIs, data models, reliability, and cost.

Requirements - At least five years of backend engineering experience. - Substantial production experience with Python, FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, and PostgreSQL at scale. - Hands-on experience shipping products built on language model APIs, including validation, cost controls, and graceful degradation. - Strong judgment in API design, data modeling, and operational reliability. - Ability to explain technical decisions clearly in longer written documents.

Nice to have Experience with AWS, Redis, infrastructure-as-code tools, and production language-model integrations is relevant to the stated platform stack.

Benefits and work setup Full-time founding role, based in Atlanta or remote within the United States. The listed compensation is $180,000–$220,000 plus 1.0–2.0% equity. A Q3 2026 start is preferred, with flexibility. Work authorization transfers may be supported; new visa petitions are not.