Looking for a Senior Full-Stack Engineer AI-Native | Startup / SaaS Experience.

We’re building Involve, a student engagement platform for schools that brings community discovery, events, student organizations, and school operations into one connected product. We’re preparing for an initial school pilot and are looking for an experienced full-stack product engineer to help turn an extensively designed and researched product into a production-ready V1. This is not an early-stage “I have an app idea” project, and we are not looking for someone simply to translate Figma screens into code. A substantial amount of product work has already been completed. We have high-fidelity Figma designs covering most of V1, an established design system and component library, defined user flows and information architecture, student/user research, documented V1 scope, roles and permissions, school/district organizational models, and detailed product/domain documentation. What we’re looking for We’re looking for a senior, product-minded full-stack engineer with meaningful startup experience, ideally someone who has worked as a founding engineer, early startup engineer, technical founder/CTO, or has personally helped take a SaaS product from zero-to-one. You should be comfortable working across the stack and making architectural decisions rather than waiting for perfectly specified engineering tickets. Our current technical direction includes: * React / TypeScript * Modern component-based frontend architecture * PostgreSQL / Supabase * Authentication and authorization * Row-Level Security and multi-tenant data isolation * REST/API integrations * OAuth 2.0 / OIDC / SSO * Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Entra integrations * Testing and CI/CD * Production deployment, logging and observability Experience building secure multi-tenant SaaS applications is particularly valuable. AI-native engineering This is especially important to us. We want someone who was already a strong software engineer before modern AI coding tools, but now uses tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, or similar agents aggressively to increase engineering velocity. We are interested in using AI throughout planning, implementation, testing, debugging, documentation and code review. At the same time, we’re not looking for AI-generated “vibe coding.” The engineer must personally maintain responsibility for architecture, security, authorization, code quality, testing and maintainability. We’d love to hear how AI has changed the way you personally build production software. What you’ll be doing You’ll work directly with the founder/product designer to: * Review the existing V1 scope, designs and technical documentation * Help determine the simplest production architecture for the initial pilot * Identify unnecessary complexity and challenge requirements when appropriate * Build the application across frontend and backend * Translate the existing design system into reusable production components * Implement authentication, permissions and school/organization data boundaries * Build and integrate core product workflows * Implement external identity/directory integrations * Establish testing, deployment and development workflows * Document important architectural decisions * Ship frequently to staging so the product can be tested throughout development * Help prepare the application for a real school pilot We care much more about shipping a small, excellent V1 than building unnecessary infrastructure for hypothetical future scale. How we like to work We want to operate like a small startup product team, not a traditional client/agency relationship. The founder owns product strategy, UX research and primary product design. We are also considering working with an experienced senior product designer during implementation to help audit and refine the design system, usability, edge cases and developer handoff. We want engineering involved in product decisions early. We value direct communication, frequent collaboration, thoughtful disagreement and people who challenge assumptions rather than simply saying yes to requirements. Ideally, product, design and engineering can discuss a problem together, make a decision quickly, implement it, put it in front of users and iterate. We prefer frequent working releases over a large delivery at the end of the project. What success looks like The goal of this engagement is not simply to “finish the screens.” Success means we have a V1 that: * Accurately implements the core product experience * Is secure and properly isolates users/schools/organizations * Has clean, understandable and maintainable architecture * Has appropriate automated testing around critical workflows * Can be deployed and monitored reliably * Can be tested with real users throughout development * Is documented well enough that another strong engineer could enter the codebase without depending on the original developer * Is ready for an initial school pilot All production source code, repositories, infrastructure and related accounts will remain under Involve’s ownership/control. Who we’d especially like to meet We’d particularly like to hear from engineers who have experience as a: Founding Engineer · Technical Founder · Startup CTO · Early Startup Engineer · Senior/Staff Product Engineer Previous experience in education technology, regulated industries, identity/access management, enterprise SaaS or products handling sensitive user data is a plus. We’re open to beginning with a smaller paid engagement to establish fit before expanding into the complete V1 build. If we work exceptionally well together, there is potential for a much longer-term relationship as Involve grows.