PocketSuite started with a simple observation. Our CEO Chinwe experienced yet another late arrival with her cleaner then wait 60 to 90 days to send an invoice. She was ready to pay on the spot, but the cleaner was juggling multiple calendars and an out-of-state accounting business partner just to run their business. Chinwe teamed up with Yang, her co-founder and engineer #5 at NetSuite, who had helped build business management systems for Fortune 500s because he wanted to do the same thing for the solo hairstylist, the mobile dog groomer, the independent therapist.
That was 2015 (YC W16). Today, PocketSuite is the all-in-one platform thousands of service professionals and SMBs use to get booked, get paid, and communicate with their clients. We call it the Rule of 5: if our pros can't figure out a feature in 5 seconds, we haven't done our job. That constraint shapes every line of code we ship.
What makes us different from the dozen other "booking and payments" tools? We go vertical. We don't build a generic calendar and call it a day. We build the specific workflows a dog trainer needs to manage multi-session packages, or the exact invoicing flow a mobile hairstylist needs when they're finishing up at a client's kitchen table. That verticalization strategy a mile wide, an inch deep on the features that actually matter is why our pros stay.
We're a small, founder-led team. Chinwe and Yang still check in code, review PRs and talk to customers every day. You won't be a cog here.
We're looking for a Lead Engineer who can own entire product surfaces end-to-end from database schema to deploy. Your initial role is as a senior individual contributor reporting directly to the CTO, with a clear path to technical leadership as the team grows.
This is not a "maintain the monolith" role. You'll be shipping net-new features across payments (Stripe integration, fraud scoring, Stripe Capital), real-time messaging, scheduling, and AI-powered workflow automation all within a mobile-first codebase serving iOS, Android, and React web clients backed by a Python API layer. As the 6th engineer on the team, you are going to be a foundational engineer on the team delivering 10x the impact across 10x the surface footprint you would at most other companies.
Python · React · iOS · Android · Postgres · SQLite · Ubuntu · Docker
Days 1–7: Get Oriented Align on company vision and 2026 priorities. Meet the engineering team. Set up your dev environment. Learn the product by exploring the code and actually using it book a session, send an invoice, message a client. Start getting to know our customers and why they chose us.
Days 7–14: Get Your Hands Dirty Close your first 2-3 issues. Begin work on your first feature. Meet the product team and start diving into a major product area: payments, messaging, documents, scheduling, tools, infrastructure.
Days 14–30: Ship Your First Feature Close 5-10 issues a week. Ship your first feature. Begin work on your second feature and dive into your next major product area.
By Day 60: You're shipping a feature every two weeks and have deep context across at least three major product areas.
By Day 90: You're shipping a new feature every week. You own your product surfaces and are driving architectural decisions independently.
Must-haves:
Strong signals:
About the degree thing: A CS or Engineering degree is great, but it's not what we're optimizing for. We care far more about what you've built, the pace at which you've shipped, and the impact you've had. If you've scaled a Python/React app to 100k+ users, led a complex Stripe integration, or built a product from zero to real revenue. That tells us more than any diploma.
PocketSuite is the all-in-one platform built for service businesses. From bookings and payments to client communication and beyond, we help owners and managers simplify their business and focus on what they do best. For more than a decade, thousands of independent professionals, small businesses, and multi-location brands have trusted PocketSuite to power their service businesses and serve hundreds of thousands of clients. We’re proud to support a diverse community of entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey. PocketSuite empowers the U.S. market of 20 million service businesses, generating $1 billion in sales with a desktop and mobile cloud solution for running their business. Thousands of businesses run on PocketSuite. Over 600,000 clients book, pay, and communicate with their service providers on PocketSuite today, and we're growing fast.
Salary
$174,000 - $192,000
Equity
0.25% - 0.5%
Location
Remote
Experience
6+ years
Total raised
$1.6M
Last stage
Seed
Investors
No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.