Founding Engineer (Backend)
hace 3 días
New York
Job DescriptionFounding Engineer (Backend) New York, USA Salary: $325,000 Equity: 1-1.5% USA Work Authorization Required Intra-USA Relocation Package Available Context graphs. Hyper-personalised, proactive AI. Promptless, anticipatory software is the future of consumer and enterprise Life Operating Systems. If you’re a talented engineer looking to join a company where you will get real ownership, keep reading. About Aurora Aurora is the lifestyle operating system for the world’s highest-performance founders, athletes, and family offices. Our mobile app empowers ultra-high-performance individuals and their teams to master relationships, exploration, and longevity across five lifestyle categories: travel, dining, experiences, luxury goods, and longevity. To date, we have: • Raised $4M from Tier-1 investors and operators, including the founder of Cleo, Quadpay, early investors in Supercell and Deliveroo, the President of VistaJet, and tier-1 athletes including Kevin Love and Kyle Kuzma, • Achieved industry-leading engagement among paying members, with a growing waitlist seeking access The Founding Engineer Our early team of 20 is searching for an exceptional Backend Engineer to join as one of Aurora’s founding technical hires. You’ll work directly with our Co-Founders and product leadership to define and build Aurora’s backend infrastructure and foundations for our agentic functions - intelligent systems that anticipate, curate, and execute on the needs of the world’s highest-performing individuals. We already own 500,000 unique calendar events, wearable signals, and user facts - a rich, proprietary context graph for taste primed for our next stage of agentic solutions. This is a chance to build the infrastructure for the next chapter in prompt-less system architecture, which unlocks human performance, connection, and health, working with one of the world’s most unique proprietary behavioral datasets. This role reports directly to Aurora’s Co-Founder & CTO, Dmitry Ogurtsov (previously Director of Engineering at conversational AI tool Workbounce, acquired by ZoomInfo), with the opportunity to rapidly grow into a leadership position across Engineering and Product. Our Principles We’re a hard-working team of tier-1 backed and exited operators united by our five core principles: • We seek truth, • We are high-leverage, • We are courageous, • We care deeply, • We believe impossible is an attitude Why Aurora: High Leverage Build a daily-use product placed directly in the hands of the world’s most ambitious individuals and organizations - empowering them to compound their time, relationships, and global impact. Cutting-Edge AI Work hands-on with a next-generation AI system redefining lifestyle management at the highest level, spanning context, recommendation, orchestration, and execution. The lightest-weight, highest-leverage way to earn engagement, trust, and spend of the most powerful consumer cohort in history, and beyond. Generationally Defining Play a foundational role in building the Anduril-Lattice of the lifestyle management - a $100bn opportunity at the intersection of technology, luxury, and longevity. About the Founders Aurora was founded in 2024 by: • Jonah Lowenstein, previously backed by leading investors and operators behind Facebook, Spotify, and Venmo, • Aurelius Zwick, UK Young Entrepreneur of the Year To date we've raised >$4M from tier-1 investors and operators across our relevant industries, including one of the leading consumer AI founders: Barney from Cleo, the founder of Quadpay, Mural and Wander, early investors in Supercell and Deliveroo, the President of VistaJet, and tier-1 athletes including Kevin Love and Kyle Kuzma. Requirements Key Responsibilities: • Take full ownership of features from concept to production rollout., • Design and build backend services and APIs in Python/Django with high reliability and clarity., • Maintain and evolve our agent orchestration, LLM integrations, and RAG/data pipelines., • Architect and improve cloud-native systems on GCP (Cloud Run, GKE, Cloud SQL, Redis, GCS)., • Develop and maintain IaC with Terraform to ensure consistent, stable deployments., • Optimize performance across SQL queries, Celery workloads, and backend endpoints., • Lead debugging, incident resolution, and root-cause analysis for production issues., • Implement secure coding practices and support compliance efforts (SOC2, PCI DSS, ISO 27001)., • Collaborate cross-functionally with product, curators, and frontend/mobile engineers., • Review code, mentor teammates, and drive architectural improvements. Who You Are:, • Deeply product-minded: you care deeply about the customer and think from first principles about how to make their experience seamless and delightful., • Technically skilled: strong Python experience and a proven ability to build reliable, production-grade features., • Curious and self-driven: someone who naturally obsessively experiments on weekends, brings new ideas to the table, and gets energy from building real, user-facing systems., • Hungry and ambitious: you thrive in early-stage, high-ownership environments where speed, creativity, and adaptability matter more than titles or bureaucracy., • 5+ years of experience building and operating production systems., • Expert-level Django engineer: deep familiarity with DRF, best practices, and common pitfalls., • Strong command of Python, including data structures, algorithms, system design, and architecture patterns., • Solid experience with distributed job queues, ideally Celery, and designing resilient background processing., • Strong understanding of Infrastructure as Code, preferably Terraform, and modern cloud-native tooling., • Hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform, particularly: GCR, GKE, Cloud SQL, GCS, and Cloud Logging., • Strong SQL skills, including query performance optimization and schema design., • Familiarity with security and compliance frameworks such as PCI DSS, SOC2, ISO 27001, and OWASP recommendations., • Experience with machine learning (scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow)., • Experience working with LLMs (Vertex AI, OpenAI) and modern AI toolchains., • Exposure to agentic systems, RAG pipelines, and intelligent automation., • Competitive salary + uncapped performance-based bonus., • Founding stock options package on the ground floor of a $10bn+ opportunity., • Lifestyle perks and access to exclusive Aurora events and services., • Whoop or Oura Ring on us., • $2,000 annual education budget., • Whatever tech you need to do your best work., • Generous parental leave., • Comprehensive health benefits, with 90% coverage including dental and vision.