Application Programming Interface (API), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Authentication, Billing, Bridge Building, Cloud Computing, Construction, Data Analysis, Data Management, Data Modeling, Django, Electrical Engineering, Java, JavaScript, Leadership, Machine Tool, Mechanical Engineering, Microsoft .NET, Object Relational Mapping (ORM), On Site Support, Pagination, PostgreSQL, Product Demonstration, Product Shipments, Project/Program Management, Python Programming/Scripting Language, Quality Control, Query Optimization, React.js, Software as a Service (SaaS), System Validation, Traffic Shaping, United States Citizen, User Interface Design, User Interface/Experience (UI/UX), Web Services, Work From Home, eCommerce
Title: Sr. Full-Stack Founding Engineer — AI Platform
Department: Technology / Software
Location: Kansas City, MO — Crossroads Arts District (preference in-office with flex to work from home as needed)
Type: Direct Hire / Perm
Status: US Citizen / Green Card Permanent Resident / W2 Exempt - Unable to Sponsor or work C2C
Salary: $150K–$200K (some flex, based on talent)
Reports To: Chief Technology Officer
SUMMARY:
Our client is a sixth-generation, family-owned heavy/civil contractor based in Kansas City, in business since 1880. They have built 845+ bridges and placed 3,500+ lane miles of pavement across the Midwest and is currently behind some of the region's largest infrastructure projects. Underneath that 145-year track record, our client is investing in modern technology — including a new AI-powered software platform meant to bring everyone on a complex project (contractors, craftsmen and field supervisors, estimators, architects, mechanical and electrical engineers, quality control, and project management) together on one system.
As a Sr. Full-Stack Founding Engineer, you will help build this platform from an early stage, working directly with the CTO. This is a high-ownership, full-stack role — you own features across the entire stack, make real architecture decisions, ship them, and keep improving on the results. This is not a maintenance role on someone else's system; it is a builder's seat inside a company that builds physical infrastructure and is now investing seriously in software and AI.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
Build & Own the Stack
- Design, build, and ship full-stack features across frontend, backend, and data layers.
- Own systems end-to-end — auth, multi-tenancy, billing, and deployment — as connected concerns, not isolated tickets.
- Make pragmatic architecture decisions early, ship them, and refine as the product and requirements evolve.
AI & Data
- Build and maintain Python services that power data pipelines and AI workloads.
- Integrate LLMs (Claude / Anthropic and others) into real product workflows — not demos.
- Apply sound data modeling and query design in Postgres to keep the platform fast and reliable as it scales.
Integration & Reliability
- Wire up third-party and enterprise APIs, handling authentication, rate limits, and pagination.
- Build systems that recover gracefully when upstream services misbehave.
Team & Culture
- Collaborate directly with the CTO and early team to set technical direction.
- Contribute to a fast-moving, low-process culture that values ownership, directness, and judgment.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 4+ years building production SaaS — you have owned auth, multi-tenancy, billing, and deployment as a system, not as someone else's problem.
- Full-stack TypeScript — comfortable across the frontend and backend; our stack is Next.js with a modern Postgres-backed backend-as-a-service layer (Supabase/Deno).
- Front-end craft — as a founding engineer you own UI design decisions and build clean, functional user-facing features in React / Next.js and TypeScript.
- Python web service experience — FastAPI, Flask, Django, or similar; we run Python services for data pipelines and AI workloads.
- LLM integration experience — you have shipped a real product feature using an AI model (Claude, GPT, or similar) in a production workflow.
- Third-party integration experience — you have wired up enterprise APIs, handled rate limits, and recovered gracefully when upstream services misbehave.
- Strong Postgres — row-level security, views, and query optimization; not just ORM-level familiarity.
- Data management & analysis — comfortable working with data across systems, validating it, and analyzing it to make sure it's accurate and usable, not just stored.
- Early / founding engineer background — you have built in a small-team environment before and know how to make a decision, ship it, and fix it if it's wrong.
- Open-stack orientation — modern web/cloud tooling; this is not a Java or .NET shop
- Cultural fit — ownership, directness, and the ability to move fast without heavy process.
NICE TO HAVE:
- Direct experience with Claude / Anthropic models.
- Experience with Supabase and Deno Edge Functions specifically.
- E-commerce or marketplace platform experience (catalog, cart, checkout, payments, order lifecycle).
- Construction tech, field-operations software, or other complex multi-stakeholder platform experience.
WHY THIS ROLE:
- Real ownership on a platform being built from the ground up, backed by an established, financially stable company.
- Work directly with a CTO who brings 20+ years of SaaS leadership experience.
- Fast-moving hiring process; compensation is open for the right person.