Platform modernization under load. We inherited a large microservices codebase. We're migrating toward a modern, agent-friendly architecture while keeping production stable for clients processing millions in transactions. This is systems engineering, not greenfield hacking — and it requires judgment about what to rebuild, what to wrap, and what to leave alone.

What This Role Actually Looks Like

You report to the CTO. The team is small. That means your work has disproportionate impact, but it also means there's nowhere to hide. You'll own entire systems end-to-end: scoping, building, testing, deploying, and operating them in production.

In your first 90 days, you'll likely:

• Ship production code in your first week
• Own a critical automation pipeline that has direct, measurable impact on the business
• Work directly with our operations and client service teams to understand the manual processes you're replacing — and build the thing that actually solves their problem, not the thing that looks good in a demo
• Make architectural decisions that the rest of the team builds on

We're not looking for someone who needs a product spec and a Jira ticket to start working. We need someone who can look at a messy operational process, understand why it exists, figure out what "solved" looks like, and build it — then measure whether it actually worked.

You Might Be a Fit If

• You've built and shipped systems that handle real money, real data, or real compliance constraints — not just prototypes
• You treat testing, validation, and edge case handling as part of the work, not a separate phase someone else does
• You've operated in an environment where you had to figure out the "what" and the "how," not just execute against a spec
• You're comfortable working across backend systems, data pipelines, and infrastructure — and you can pick up new tools and frameworks fast when the problem demands it
• You've worked with or built LLM-powered applications and understand both the potential and the failure modes
• You'd rather own a hard problem at a small company than be a cog in a machine at a big one

What We're Not Looking For

• Engineers who optimize for clean architecture over shipping. We care about code quality, but we care about outcomes more.
• People who need extensive onboarding before they're productive. Our codebase is messy in places. You need to be comfortable navigating ambiguity and building context on your own.
• Anyone who treats QA or validation as someone else's job. If you build it, you own whether it works — end to end, in production, with real users.

Compensation and Details

• Location: NYC
• Compensation: Competitive salary + meaningful equity. We're Series A — the equity is early enough to matter.
• Stack: Python, Angular/React, Express, PostgreSQL, AWS. But we care more about engineering judgment than stack familiarity.

A meeting lands on your calendar

If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.