What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Platform Engineer position at SelectFew?
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.
Requirements
Key Responsibilities
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.
Requirements
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
- 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
- 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
