Founding Engineer, Full Stack

Remote / Engineering / Full-Time Employee

Joined your last startup too late to have the impact you wanted? Or are you ready to take the next step and help shape the direction of a startup from the outset? Here's your chance to be our Founding Engineer.

You'll join us, Dan and Hunter, as the Founding Engineer on our team building an innovative solution in the B2B commerce vertical. The space is ready to be disrupted and stuck in the 2000s - creating an opportunity to be the vertical-leading platform. 

We're building this because we’ve talked to hundreds of brands who kept telling us they were faced with the same challenges when it came to retention. We’ve already secured funding, have a team of industry veterans as advisors, and have built our MVP with an agency (that we’ve worked with in a previous life). 

We've got the business expertise, you'll bring the technical. Together we'll make this venture wildly successful.

What’s on the Table

While we work remotely, we are very much in sync and have spent hours together brainstorming the next feature or talking smack about a dumb post we saw on LinkedIn (only half kidding). Dan is an early bird based in Boston and Hunter is a night owl based in LA, so if you’re in one of those cities we’re open to co-working. 

When it comes to working hours, the big thing that we care about is getting your work done, so you can work the hours that work best for you - noting that we will have certain team syncs that you will need to be online for. Also note that Dan is the sarcastic, jokingly salty one and Hunter might talk your ear off about random subjects, so choose wisely…

We’re thrilled to be setting out to solve a problem that will help businesses grow, while saving them time and want you to feel the same way. Depending on your background and interest, we’ll give you the flexibility to play a role in product definition, making impactful decisions regarding architecture and tooling, and leading a team. If we’re doing our jobs correctly, not only are we solving a huge pain point for our customers, but we’re making room for you to push your career to the next level and build something you’re incredibly proud of.

Founding Engineer opportunities are the holy grail for great engineers. You're going to look back on applying to this one as one of the best decisions you’ve ever made.

What We’re Looking For

Since you’ll be the first technical hire, we need you to be full-stack. You’ll develop features, propose scalable, reliable solutions, and work closely with us to evolve our product. 

We’ve partnered with a great agency to develop our beta version, and we work with technical advisors much smarter than ourselves to validate that we’re building it correctly. We’re set up for scale so you won’t need to do a complete rebuild. However, we’ll lean on you to take what we have and make it even better.

Qualifications

  • You live and breathe code, but you also intuitively understand how what you’re shipping fits into the bigger picture of the product

  • You feel ready for this type of opportunity–the prospect of owning an early-stage product thrills you (although some nerves are okay–we’ve been there!)

  • Experience with a modern tech stack–we’re working with TypeScript (Remix, Nest.js), PostgreSQL, AWS

  • A track record showing that we can lean on you to make critical decisions about our product. This track record can take many forms–we encourage people of ALL backgrounds to apply

Responsibilities

  • Develop features from back-end to front-end, including APIs, infrastructure, and UI/UX

  • Propose scalable, reliable solutions

  • Maintain a cohesive codebase in a collaborative environment

  • Optimize infrastructure and architecture

  • Research new technologies to enhance performance and efficiency

Requirements

  • 5+ years of full-stack development experience (Nest.js, Remix, Vue.js, or React)

  • Proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript and RESTful APIs

  • Experience with MySQL or PostgreSQL

  • Familiarity with Git, CI/CD tools, and deploying to multiple environments

  • Cloud infrastructure experience on AWS

Bonus Points for experience in commerce, building early-stage, or working with Shopify APIs, email/SMS marketing, subscription services, or loyalty programs.

Our Tech Stack

  • Remix and Nest.js on AWS ECS

  • APIs connected to Shopify, Stripe, and AWS RDS

  • Amazon SQS / Lambda for data synchronization

The Elevator Pitch

Vanik removes the hassle for brands selling to independent retailers by automating reorders, rewarding loyalty, and recommending related products. This space is stuck in the 2000s, meaning brands manage everything manually over spreadsheets or through calls. Don’t take our word for it–we discovered this need by talking to hundreds of brands over the past year (and are happy to share with you snip-its from our calls so you can hear first-hand what brands are saying). Solving this problem means making a real impact on people’s lives, whether that’s giving a single mom time back in her day or helping the next big brand hit the stratosphere.

Dan operates a brand that sells to independent retailers as a side hustle and spent time at both Klaviyo and Shopify, and Hunter was a supply chain consultant at Deloitte and operated a VC-backed commerce subscription app. We like to think we know a thing or two about Commerce (and a few things that aren’t Commerce)!

We secured pre-seed funding from a venture capital firm and relevant angels, including the ex-VP of Marketing at Klaviyo. We’re kicking off our seed raise soon.

Learn more about Vanik here.

If This Sounds Compelling, We Want You to Apply!

Vanik is an equal opportunity employer. Vanik recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected statuses as required by applicable law. In addition to EEO being the law, it is a policy that is foundational to our principles. We strongly encourage people from ALL backgrounds to apply for this position.