Founding engineer · full-stack
Ship the editor, the engines, and the chrome. Senior, no junior team to lead — yet.
You'll be founding engineer #2. You ship.
What you'll do
- Own a vertical slice end-to-end: editor surface (Tauri / Capacitor / web) → API (Next route handlers) → DB (Supabase / Postgres) → format (Fountain / FDX exporter)
- Help define the engineering bar: code review, golden tests for FDX round-trip, the "we ship every Friday" cadence
- Pair with Isabella (founder) on product weekly; we run small and we run honest
What we want
- Senior. 7+ years shipping production code. The kind of senior who can debug a paginator at 11pm and write a postmortem at 9am.
- Strong TypeScript / React / Node. Bonus for Rust (Tauri build) or Swift / Kotlin (Capacitor native bridges).
- You've shipped a desktop or mobile app to consumers, or you have a strong opinion about why both are different from web.
- You take refusal seriously. If you want to add an "AI generates the scene" button, this is not the job.
What we don't want
- Resume-driven dev. We use what works. We adopt things slowly.
- Anyone whose answer to "should we ship this?" is "yes." The four vows say no a lot.
- Crypto / Web3 / "AI agents" enthusiasts. Wrong company.
Comp
$160k–$210k base, 1.0–2.5% equity (4-year vest, 1-year cliff, 83(b) standard), full health / dental / vision, $3k home-office stipend, unlimited PTO with a 3-week minimum.
Location
Remote in the US. We bring the team together once a quarter — last one was Brooklyn.
Apply
Email isabella@tryarqo.com. Subject: "Founding engineer · {{your name}}". Include:
1. A link to something you've shipped (code, product, both). 2. One paragraph on why Arqo over Sudowrite / Final Draft / a generic AI startup. 3. One paragraph on a refusal you've stood behind at work — when you said "we're not doing this," even though it would have been the easy yes.
We reply within 5 business days. The process is two paid pairing sessions (4 hours each, $200/hr if you don't pass), then a 60-minute conversation with Isabella, then offer or no.