Hybrid Founding Senior Backend Engineer

at Foundway

• Job title: Founding Senior Backend Engineer
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: No Education Requirement
• Tech skills: Cloud, Docker, Node.js, Python, Terraform, TypeScript
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Barcelona, Spain

About the role

• Founding Senior Backend Engineer developing cloud-native backend architecture at Foundway, a video analytics startup. Collaborating closely with Founder and early customers to drive product metrics and iterations.

Responsibilities

• Design & build a cloud-native backend that scales from dozens to millions of content workflows.
• Integrate AI services LLM APIs, image models, vector DBs into clean abstractions (no custom model training required, but you’ll set the patterns).
• Own infrastructure: set up CI/CD, monitoring and observability, and keep latency low and costs sane.
• Establish engineering culture with fast code reviews, test strategy, release cadence, lightweight docs.
• Own AI-automation workflows evaluate and adopt AI coding agents and other developer-productivity tools to super-power our small engineering team.
• Collaborate directly with the Founder & early customers, turning pain points into product iterations and experiments in days, not quarters.
• Work closely with the Founder on launching experiments that drive product metrics.

Requirements

• 6+ years building production backends and have taken at least one system from 0 to scale.
• Fluent in TypeScript/Node and Python and comfortable designing REST APIs.
• Hands-on experience with relational data modeling plus distributed caches and cloud processes.
• Wired up LLM or generative-AI APIs in production products (RAG pipelines, embeddings, prompt orchestration, etc.).
• Get DevOps: Terraform, Docker, CI/CD, monitoring, alerts.
• Love working smartly and shipping quickly.
• Thrive in a fast-paced, early-stage environment where priorities shift and nothing is somebody else’s problem.
• Know how to prioritize high-leverage work.

Benefits

• Impact opportunity: help define how the world works with video in a nascent, rapidly-growing market at the intersection of AI and media.
• Compensation: generous equity package with a modest cash stipend until post-fundraising.
• Competitive salary post-fundraising.
• Massive ownership: your architecture decisions today will be running years from now.
• Founding-team timing: become the very first engineering hire and shape the company before we head to YC / Seed, locking in meaningful equity and influence.
• Flexible work: hybrid Barcelona HQ or fully remote within ±2 hours CET.
• Lightning-fast process: interview with Founder → deep-dive → offer.