Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Founding Engineer based in Brazil.

This role offers the opportunity to become the first technical hire at an early-stage B2B SaaS startup transforming how consumer goods manufacturers manage their operations. You will act as a technical partner to the founder, shaping product direction, architecture, and engineering practices from the ground up. The position combines full-stack development, system design, infrastructure ownership, and strategic decision-making. You will have significant autonomy to build scalable solutions, influence technical standards, and deliver meaningful product outcomes.

Working closely with business and product stakeholders, you will translate ideas into reliable, customer-focused technology. The ideal candidate is passionate about startups, enjoys solving complex problems, and thrives in environments where ownership matters. This is a unique opportunity to create lasting impact by building technology from the foundation stage.

The Founding Engineer will take full ownership of the technical foundation, working closely with leadership to build, scale, and improve a modern SaaS platform. This role requires a hands-on engineer who can balance technical execution with strategic thinking and product ownership.

• Audit, improve, and take ownership of the existing product codebase, architecture, and development processes.
• Build and deliver full-stack features across front-end, back-end, and infrastructure using modern technologies.
• Develop backend services with Python, FastAPI, SQL Alchemy, Alembic, and build user-facing applications with frameworks such as Next.js.
• Design, optimize, and maintain PostgreSQL database structures, including schema evolution and migrations.
• Build and maintain real-time application capabilities using Web Sockets when appropriate.
• Own deployment workflows, infrastructure improvements, and application reliability within cloud environments.
• Establish engineering standards, best practices, testing strategies, and scalable development workflows as the first technical team member.
• Create and maintain unit and integration tests to ensure product quality and long-term maintainability.
• Collaborate directly with the founder to transform business ideas into technical solutions and shipped products.
• Contribute to technical strategy, architecture decisions, and future engineering team growth.
• Mentor future engineers and help establish a culture of ownership, collaboration, and technical excellence.
• Explore and integrate AI capabilities into the product roadmap, including AI-powered features and automation opportunities.

The ideal candidate is an experienced full-stack engineer with a strong startup mindset, capable of making technical decisions independently while collaborating closely with founders and business stakeholders. You should be comfortable building products from zero, working across multiple areas of engineering, and adapting quickly in an evolving environment.

• 5–6 years of full-stack software engineering experience with strong knowledge of front-end and back-end architecture.
• Professional experience with Python, FastAPI, SQL Alchemy, Alembic, Web Sockets, and modern React-based frameworks such as Next.js.
• Strong SQL skills and experience designing, querying, and optimizing PostgreSQL databases.
• Experience with relational database design and managing schema changes through migration tools.
• Experience developing and maintaining real-time applications.
• Proven ability to write and maintain unit and integration tests for reliable software delivery.
• Experience deploying and operating applications in cloud environments; experience with Railway is a plus.
• Understanding of AI and LLM technologies, including APIs, prompt engineering, retrieval systems, or AI-powered product development, is an advantage.
• Founder mindset with the ability to challenge assumptions, propose improvements, and take full ownership of outcomes.
• Experience building products from 0 to 1 in startup environments.
• Strong problem-solving…