Founding Engineer - Senior Backend at Stealth Mortgage AI Startup

A portfolio company of the AI2 Incubator

About Us:

Every year over 8 million Americans take out a residential mortgage, enabling them to achieve the dream of home ownership. Unfortunately, the mortgage process can take upwards of 30 days, involves hours of manual labor, and causes immense stress for homebuyers.

Friday Harbor is a mortgage technology start-up transforming mortgage origination, making it faster, smarter, and more efficient than ever before.

Our company initially emerged from the Allen Institute for AI in Seattle. While our headquarters are in Seattle, our engineering team is fully remote with quarterly team off-sites. We offer flexibility and work-life balance while still fostering a collaborative and creative team environment.

We are looking for a visionary Founding Engineer to join our team and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our AI-first company. This is a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of the AI revolution, working with state-of-the-art technologies such as Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAGs) to build intelligent systems that will redefine the mortgage industry.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the development of our core product, collaborating closely with the CTO to define and implement product features and enhancements.
• Architect and build scalable backend systems and APIs to support our AI-driven mortgage underwriting platform.
• Integrate with external services and APIs to enhance the functionality and capabilities of our product.
• Optimize the performance, security, and reliability of our systems, ensuring a seamless experience for our users.
• Collaborate with the CTO to integrate LLMs, and RAGs into our product, as well as working on them yourself!
• Build products from zero to one and shipping greenfield features and systems.
• Play a key role in forging the culture of our technical team.
• Contribute to the overall product strategy and roadmap, providing technical insights and recommendations.

Requirements:

• 4+ years of experience as a backend engineer, with expertise in building scalable and high-performance systems using Python.
• Experience with cloud platforms, preferably AWS, and containerization technologies like Kubernetes and Docker.
• Production experience with SQL, SQL-like systems as well as key-value stores such as Redis.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to design and implement efficient and maintainable software solutions.
• Experience working in an early stage startup environment.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, cross-functional team environment.
• Passion for crafting exceptional user experiences and a deep commitment to customer satisfaction.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong familiarity with frontend technologies such as Next.js, Tailwind, and TypeScript.
• Experience with Langchain or similar AI/LLM integration frameworks.
• Experience with CICD processes, Infrastructure, DevOps, etc.
• Experience working on modern financial technology systems.
• Contributions to open-source projects or a strong portfolio of personal projects.
• Interest in mortgage, real estate, or fintech

We offer a competitive salary, significant equity compensation, and a benefits package. Our compensation strategy is geared towards creating the possibility for an extremely positive potential equity upside for our early employees.

This is your chance to learn and build cutting-edge AI systems, work with LLMs and RAG, and make a lasting impact in the housing industry.

About the AI2 Incubator:

The AI2 Incubator helps entrepreneurs come up with ideas, find co-founders, engage pilot customers, refine their product, work with research paper authors to incorporate the latest A.I. techniques into their technology, and raise millions of dollars in venture funding. They have a strategic relationship with the Allen Institute for A.I.—a world-leading research institute with over 200 A.I. PhDs, researchers, engineers, and support staff—allowing them to dive deep into the latest tech and access one of the most talented groups of researchers.

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