Founding Software Engineer

Founding Engineer (Backend / Infrastructure)

YC W25 • $5M seed led by Will Ventures • New York (In-Person)

We’re a YC W25 company building core infrastructure for the prediction markets ecosystem. We’re the leading infrastructure provider in the space, with 100+ paying users, and are growing quickly as the category matures.

We’re looking for a Founding Engineer to work directly with the founders to own and scale the systems that power our platform. This is a true founding role with meaningful equity, real technical ownership, and the opportunity to help define both the product and the company from the ground up.

What You’ll Do

• Take clear, extreme ownership of critical backend and infrastructure systems — from architecture to production reliability.
• Design, build, and operate APIs and services that support high-throughput, real-money, and time-sensitive workloads.
• Make core technical decisions alongside the founders, including system design, tradeoffs, and roadmap priorities.
• Work day-to-day with state-of-the-art AI tooling (coding agents, automation, internal AI workflows) to move faster and raise the quality bar.
• Establish engineering best practices around performance, observability, security, and scalability.
• Help shape early hiring, tooling, and engineering culture as the team grows.

What We’re Looking For

• 4–8 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong backend engineering background with experience owning production systems end-to-end.
• Proven experience being responsible for mission-critical infrastructure (on-call, incident response, scaling, etc.).
• Ability and willingness to work with modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate execution.
• Experience with some of the following (not all required):
  • TypeScript / Node.js
  • AWS (ECS/Fargate, IAM, networking)
  • GCP
  • DynamoDB or other high-scale datastores
• High agency, strong product instincts, and comfort operating in ambiguity.
• Excitement about working at an early-stage startup where speed, ownership, and judgment matter.

Strongly Preferred

• In-person in New York (relocation provided).
• Interest in or excitement about prediction markets, financial infrastructure, or market design.
• Prior startup or early-stage company experience.

Why Join

• Clear, extreme ownership of systems that matter.
• Competitive salary and meaningful founding-level equity.
• Real influence over architecture, product direction, and company trajectory.
• The opportunity to help shape an emerging industry at the infrastructure layer.
• Strong runway and backing from top-tier investors, including Will Ventures and YC.

Founders

• Founding engineers and early builders at decacorn-scale startups, with experience operating systems at real scale.
• Backgrounds at top-tier technology companies (e.g., Google, Adobe) combined with deep startup execution experience.
• Strong track record building and operating high-throughput, real-money, and production-critical systems.
• Ego-less, builder-first culture: everyone is technical, writes production code, and wears all hats.
• Strong bias toward ownership, clarity, and shipping over hierarchy or heavy process.

This role is likely not a fit if:

• You’re looking for a narrowly scoped role rather than owning systems end-to-end.
• You prefer remote-only work or limited in-person collaboration.
• You’re uncomfortable operating in ambiguity or making high-impact decisions without perfect information.
• You’re not excited about wearing multiple hats across backend, infrastructure, and product in an early-stage company.

If you’re excited about owning critical systems, working closely with technically strong founders, and building foundational infrastructure that shapes an emerging market, we’d love to talk.