What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Engineer (Platform) position at Averi?
About the Company
We are an early-stage startup building a cutting-edge AI-powered platform that includes agentic workflows, conversational AI, and seamless integrations to generate high-quality training data. As we push the boundaries of AI, we need a Founding Engineer / Platform Lead to architect and scale the non-AI components of our platform, including API integrations, core infrastructure, marketplace technology, and platform reliability.
This is a foundational hire—you’ll have massive ownership over the product, infrastructure, and engineering culture as we scale.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the Platform Architecture: Design and build a scalable, high-performance cloud infrastructure on AWS.
- Lead API Integrations: Develop and manage integrations with third-party APIs, data sources, and enterprise systems.
- Build & Scale Core Systems: Architect and optimize backend services, databases, and microservices.
- Develop the Marketplace Ecosystem: Build the tech that powers our marketplace, enabling seamless transactions and interactions.
- Ensure Platform Reliability & Security: Implement best practices for scalability, reliability, observability, and security.
- Work Closely with AI & Product Teams: Ensure seamless integration between AI workflows and the broader platform.
- Hands-on Coding & Execution: You’ll be both the architect and the builder, shipping high-quality code while laying the foundation for future engineers.
- Lead & Scale the Engineering Team: As we grow, you’ll hire, mentor, and define engineering culture.
Ideal Background & Experience
- 5 years in software engineering, ideally at startups or fast-growing companies.
- Deep expertise in cloud-native development, AWS, and distributed systems.
- Strong backend engineering skills in Python, TypeScript, Node.js, or Go.
- Experience building and scaling APIs (REST, GraphQL, gRPC).
- Familiarity with data engineering & streaming architectures (Kafka, Snowflake, Postgres, DynamoDB, Redis).
- Marketplace or platform experience is a major plus (Stripe, billing, user onboarding, etc.).
- Strong DevOps & infrastructure mindset (Terraform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability).
- Security-first mindset, including best practices for authentication, authorization, and data protection.
- Bias for action – comfortable making decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
- Startup mentality – entrepreneurial, adaptable, and driven by impact.
Key Qualities & Signals of a Great Candidate
- Full-stack mindset – comfortable architecting AND implementing.
- Builder mentality – loves shipping products, not just maintaining systems.
- Scalability-focused – understands how to build systems that grow efficiently.
- Hands-on leader – ready to own the platform while collaborating closely with the AI team.
- Problem-solver – enjoys tackling complex engineering challenges.
- Deep AWS expertise – can design, deploy, and optimize on AWS with ease.
- Competitive salary and equity offer.
- Unlimited PTO policy.
- Hybrid work model (2-3 days in our Williamsburg, Brooklyn office).
- Fully paid dental and vision insurance.
- Comprehensive health insurance.
- Learning and Development reimbursement program to support continuous growth.
- Employee Recognition Program to celebrate achievements and milestones.
- Opportunities for career growth and leadership development.
- Collaborative startup environment with a chance to make a significant impact.
