Founding Engineer / Head of Engineering

Why You’d Like It
Imagine stepping into a high-trust, fast-paced environment where you have absolute autonomy over an AI-native product from day one. You will skip the heavy people management and instead lead by example, setting the technical bar, owning the architecture, and charting a direct path to a CTO if that's of interest to you. With significant initial equity and a highly commercial foundation already in place, this is your chance to make a massive, tangible impact without the usual corporate red tape.

The Story
Born inside a highly successful Auckland venture studio, this business has gone from zero to live in a matter of months, already securing impressive revenue and scaling fast. Up until now, a studio team has built the initial codebase, but the time has come to hand over the reins. They need a seasoned technical powerhouse to take full internal ownership, clean up the early architecture, and scale the platform to meet aggressive commercial milestones over the next year.

Company Profile
This early-stage B2B SaaS platform is redefining how fast-growing businesses manage their brand visibility and communications. Built natively with AI and deeply integrated with modern LLMs, the platform has already captured a strong, rapidly growing customer base and secured an excellent commercial runway. Operating out of Auckland Central, this close-knit team is highly collaborative, customer-centric, and backed by the proven ecosystem behind some of New Zealand's top-tier recent startup successes.

Your Role
As the first dedicated internal engineering hire, you will take absolute ownership of the technical direction, framework, and engineering practices. Working closely with a hands-on Chief Product Officer, you will spend your days exploring customer feedback, digging into usage analytics, and continuously shipping impactful features.

• Own the platform end-to-end across the frontend, backend, data layer, and sophisticated agentic systems.
• Architect and scale production-grade LLM integrations, focusing heavily on reliability, latency, and cost.
• Establish the engineering culture, setting the standard for code reviews, automated testing, and AI-in-the-loop workflows.
• Build smart technical guardrails that empower semi-technical peers to ship code safely.
• Act as a public face for the engineering brand, contributing to the local tech community and startup ecosystem.

Benefits

• Competitive Compensation: Competitive salary plus shares with clear pathways for future top-ups as the business scales.
• Flexibility & Trust: A high-trust modern environment with flexibility, balanced with a collaborative office space.
• True Autonomy: Complete ownership of the engineering practice with the freedom to challenge ideas and shape the stack.

Your Fit
You are a senior individual contributor who thrives in fluidity and loves the "zero-to-one" building phase. You don't wait for a perfectly formed brief; instead, you have an "I see, I do" mindset and aren't afraid to roll up your sleeves on tasks big or small. Fluency across the full stack, particularly in Python-heavy environments is essential, alongside proven experience shipping actual, production-grade agentic or LLM-integrated systems. You use modern AI development tools daily, possess a strong customer focus, and are excited about a highly technical leadership role where you lead through exceptional execution rather than traditional people management.

Reach out or apply today for more info!