Founding Backend Engineer Immediate Auburn, WA (on-site) Full-time · $90k-$120k base + 1-5% equ

About the role

Next Step is hiring its founding backend engineer. You will own the core of the platform that runs real courses for schools: the data layer, the multi-tenant architecture that keeps every school physically separate, and the systems behind the course-connected tutor and grading.

This is a full-time, on-site role at our Auburn, WA office, working directly with the founders. It is an equity-forward early hire. You are trading a bigger paycheck elsewhere for real ownership of the company and the architecture you build.

We care about how you think and what you have shipped, not which framework is on your resume. If you want your code in front of students and instructors within weeks instead of quarters, write us.

• Own the data layer:
  Postgres schema design, migrations, query performance, and correctness under real course load
• Build and harden the multi-tenant architecture that keeps every school's data in its own physically isolated database
• Run most of the platform on Cloudflare:
  Workers, storage, the edge, and the deploy and reliability story around them
• Build the systems behind the course-connected tutor and grading: inference orchestration, evaluation, and keeping latency and cost in check
• Set the engineering bar. You are early enough that the patterns you choose become how we build.

• $90k to $120k base, plus a heavy founding-engineer equity stake of 1% to 5%. You own a real piece of what you build.
• Direct, daily work with the founders on architecture and product
• Full ownership of the backend from day one, not a slice of someone else's system
• Your code in front of real students and instructors within weeks
• A front-row seat to building the company from the ground up

• Strong backend fundamentals and real production experience with Postgres
• Comfort designing multi-tenant systems and reasoning about data isolation and security
• Experience running services on Cloudflare, or the ability to get there fast
• You write code other people can read, extend, and trust
• High agency. You take a vague problem, scope it, and ship it.
• Able to work on-site in Auburn, WA, at the pace of an early-stage company

• Experience wiring model inference into a product, including evaluation and cost control
• Background in education, or building for high-trust, regulated data
• Experience taking a system from prototype to something institutions depend on
• Prior founding or early-stage startup experience