Job Opportunities API

Founding Technical Leader: Head of Engineering / CTO Company: Newco (Stealth) Role: Head of Engineering / Founding Engineer (Full-Time) Location: Flexible (US, preference for NYC) S tage: Pre-seed (Venture Studio backed) Comp: Significant equity + competitive cash Who We Are Commerce is undergoing a fundamental shift. For the past decade, ecommerce has been built around static pages, manual optimization, and fragmented tooling: from analytics to experimentation to personalization. Newco is building the AI-native intelligence layer for DTC commerce. Our platform interprets shopper behavior from the moment of ad click, scores intent in real time, and dynamically personalizes the on-site experience without requiring brands to rebuild their infrastructure. Every interaction compounds: the system learns, adapts, and improves outcomes continuously. The result: higher conversion, stronger retention, and a lasting edge for brands competing in a signal-scarce, AI-native world. What You'll Do • Define system architecture from first principles and own it end-to-end • Build the initial product hands-on (this is a 0 to 1 role) • Design and scale the decisioning and personalization engine across data, infra, and product layers • Work directly with the founder on product direction and technical strategy • Hire and lead the early engineering team as the company grows • Communicate technical tradeoffs and system design to non-technical stakeholders in outcome-oriented terms Who You Are • A builder-leader at the intersection of AI, product, and real-time systems • Experienced in high-stakes, fast-moving environments: vertical SaaS, applied ML, or personalization/recommendation systems • Comfortable working across backend, frontend, and product, not siloed • Strong product intuition alongside technical execution • Thrives in ambiguity and early-stage building Key Technical Responsibilities • Decisioning and Personalization Architecture Design and scale the real-time scoring and routing engine: interpreting incomplete behavioral signals, making decisions under uncertainty, and serving personalized experiences with low latency. • LLM and Agentic Systems Build and maintain AI agent layers using frameworks like LangGraph or PydanticAI, including modular reasoning pipelines (RAG, ReAct, planner-executor) for CRO automation and content decisioning. • Data Infrastructure Integrate event-driven pipelines, vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone), and structured data stores to support real-time retrieval, persistent memory, and behavioral pattern recognition. • Evaluation and Observability Build tools for trace inspection, confidence scoring, and output validation. Develop evaluation loops and test harnesses to ensure reliability and consistency across decisioning outputs. • Engineering Architecture and Delivery Define technical standards, development processes, and system architecture to support a scalable, maintainable product. Partner with product leadership to translate strategy into roadmap. Core Skills • 5 to 7+ years of full-stack engineering experience • Experience building real-time systems, data pipelines, or decisioning / recommendation engines • Familiarity with LLM agent development and frameworks (LangGraph, PydanticAI, or similar) • Production-level experience with FastAPI, Docker, and cloud-native deployment • Comfort with vector databases and retrieval-augmented generation patterns • Proficiency in agentic IDEs (Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code) Bonus (not required) • Experience in ecommerce, marketplaces, or personalization platforms • Familiarity with event-driven or streaming architectures (Kafka, Kinesis) • Shopify ecosystem knowledge What This Is Not • Not a pure infrastructure or platform role • Not a maintenance or scaling role • Not joining a large existing team You will be building the foundation. Why Join • Significant equity + competitive cash • True technical ownership: define the system architecture from day one • Backed environment: venture studio with capital, operational support, and design partners already in market • 0 to 1 opportunity: build a company, not just write code