Founding Platform Engineer

VAIF Studio is a generative AI platform and backend for building software. Describe what you want in plain language, shape it on a visual schema canvas, or write the code yourself — all three work on the same project.

We are based in Detroit and very early. Today VAIF is built by one developer, so every role on this page is a first hire: wide ownership, direct work with the founder, and real influence on how the company operates.

Every project a customer creates on VAIF relies on backend services working quietly and correctly. As our first platform engineer you will own those services end to end: how they are designed, how they are tested, how they ship, and how they behave at 3 a.m.

This is a hands-on role. You will write most of the code you are responsible for, and you will set the engineering standards the team after you inherits.

• Design, build, and operate the core services and APIs the product and our SDKs are built on
• Own data modeling and schema changes, and ship them safely without customer-visible downtime
• Make the platform observable and dependable: useful alerts, clear service levels, and calm incident response
• Keep account and usage data accurate end to end, so customers can trust every number they see
• Set the testing, review, and release practices the rest of engineering will build on

• Several years shipping and operating production backend services in Type Script
• Real depth in Postgres: query planning, indexing, and migrations on live data
• You have owned production services on a major cloud provider, including being on call for them
• A habit of writing the test that proves the bug before fixing it
• You make sound decisions with incomplete information and write down why

• Experience building multi-tenant SaaS or developer platforms
• Work on databases, data tooling, or infrastructure products
• Open-source contributions you are proud of

• Remote, with working hours overlapping US time zones.
• Written first: decisions, proposals, and hand-offs are written down so they survive the call.
• Small, shippable steps over big reveals. We would rather release something useful this week than something perfect next quarter.
• Early-stage honesty: priorities move, process is still being invented, and you will help invent it.