We are looking for a hands on Principal Full Stack Engineer who can lead a small development team while owning complex product and architectural work. This is a player-coach role: you will write and review production code, make pragmatic architecture decisions, guide engineers and contractors, and drive delivery in close partnership with Product and the existing platform architect.
A defining requirement is proven experience building the proprietary AI capabilities of an AI SaaS product from
the ground up. We need someone who has engineered the AI application layer and its production systems, not
someone whose AI experience is limited to connecting a chatbot or third-party AI API to an existing application. Using foundation models or third-party model APIs is compatible with this requirement; the differentiator is ownership of the underlying AI product architecture and functionality.
- Lead a small engineering team: set technical direction within agreed product priorities, mentor developers, delegate work, run effective code/design reviews, coordinate contractors, remove blockers, and maintain accountability for quality and delivery.
- Build proprietary AI product capabilities: design and implement retrieval and RAG pipelines, embeddings/vector search, persistent memory and member context, stateful workflows, tool use, orchestration, guardrails, and AI-driven personalization.
- Assess the existing production codebase for security vulnerabilities, scalability and performance bottlenecks, architecture risks, data protection concerns, and reliability issues, then prioritize and implement pragmatic improvements required for a safe, stable public launch.
- Take increasing ownership of the overall technical health and architecture of the platform, ultimately becoming the internal technical owner responsible for its stability, security, scalability, reliability, and continued evolution.
- Own features end to end, from data modeling and architecture through implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, and production support.
- Work across the full stack with a strong backend focus, while remaining hands on with Vue.js frontend development and contributing to a polished customer experience.
- Serve as the internal technical counterpart to outside engineering partners, reviewing architecture and code, challenging technical decisions when appropriate, validating deliverables, and ensuring work meets product, security, scalability, and production requirements.
- Partner with the existing platform engineer on technical knowledge transfer, including architecture, codebase knowledge, environments, infrastructure, accounts, deployment processes, documentation, and operational procedures.
- Design, automate, and execute rigorous functional, regression, load, and smoke testing.
- Design and evolve relational data models, PostgreSQL schemas, queries, indexes, migrations, and Prisma models, with a strong understanding of relational database design and performance.
- Work across integrations such as Stripe Connect, LiveKit, Twilio, Zoom, Anthropic, and pgvector.
- Use AI coding agents to accelerate development while maintaining high standards for correctness, reliability, security, and maintainability.