Founding Platform Engineer

Full-time | Hybrid: Seattle or SF Bay Area | Pre-seed, backed by AI House

Finch helps companies grow their go-to-market by turning relationship-building into a repeatable system. We're starting with small in-person events like sales dinners. Finch handles the planning, details, and follow-through so our customers can focus on the relationships, not the logistics. We just shipped our MVP, our first customers are onboarding, and we're unlocking our waitlist in October. Now we're building the team to put it in customers' hands and iterate quickly.

Read This First

This is a founding engineering seat at a pre-seed funded startup. High everything: ownership, impact, intensity and a high bar. You'll be the first full-time engineer, working directly with me (the founder/CEO) and a half-time developer. You'll be close to customers, shape how the product is built, and make key technical decisions. We have our initial funding and the backing of AI House (formerly the Allen Institute for AI's "AI2 Incubator"). Finch may feel different from places you've worked. Together we'll build a culture of trust, growth, psychological safety, excellence, customer-orientation, and inclusivity. Who comes along for this ride, and how we do the work, matter.

About Me

I'm JP, Finch's founder. I was previously co-founder and CTO (and CPO) at Brightflow AI, a UC Berkeley SkyDeck-accelerated startup. We raised $20M through Series A and grew to about 50 people. I came up through software engineering as a product-focused engineer, so I'll be in the code with you. LinkedIn

The Role

Picture one platform engineer behind a few product builders who work with AI agents. They move fast. You make sure what they ship is secure and doesn't break. Expect roughly 70% platform, 30% product features, plus a few hours a week with customers, mostly in Slack.

• Design and build the platform layer that lets non-technical builders and AI agents ship software collaboratively.
• First 30-45 days: stand up our software factory (we're leaning toward an orchestrator like Gas City), get my agents and our developer's agents sharing context, and turn customer calls and Slack threads into triaged issues automatically.
• Own infrastructure, DevOps, and database and stack choices, in consultation with me.
• Build the guardrails, automation, spec-based validation, and tooling that make AI-assisted development reliable rather than risky.
• By day 90: own the data layer. That means new data sources, scrapers, and CRM integrations that ship in days, not weeks.
• Ship constantly and take features from idea to production. At six months, our product builders go flat out and nothing breaks or regresses.
• Help define the engineering culture for everyone who joins after you, and grow into leading or hiring engineers. The technical direction is yours to make happen. My experience is a resource.

How To Apply

Our application replicates the work as closely as possible. Complete a build exercise of about an hour using AI tools, and record a video walkthrough with your face on camera, starting with two minutes on something that isn't on your resume. Provn scores it against a structured rubric. Then you'll work with the team, and we'll have in-depth conversations with a former peer and manager. I make the final call. We don't screen on degrees or employer names.

How Finch Thinks About Technology, Including AI

I've been building software for decades. Things are different now. AI-native is the future we get to live in. If changing your title from "programmer" or "engineer" to the more accurate "builder" still itches, that's OK, but that is how we're building our team. We're not trying to review all the code that gets written. We do need to ensure it does what we want and doesn't cause regressions or breakages. Over time, product folks will use the building blocks you make, so set them and their agents up for success, and make sure security, data flow, and infrastructure are happening as they should. We're all still figuring some of this out, and we'll adopt the latest approaches where we decide together it makes sense. We care about AI's impacts, so we apply it carefully and use local models where we can.

Technical Stack

We run on Vercel, Postgres, and a vite+react frontend, much of it "vibe-coded" and being rewritten. I expect to keep the database. Long-term we know AWS best, but nothing here is required. Through AI House we have generous AWS, GCP, and Azure credits, including GPU credits, and early access to new tools from frontier labs.

How Finch Works Together / Our Values

We're a small team, so how we work matters as much as what we build.

• Problems, not tasks. I'll hand you problems to the highest level your experience supports. Make the call and run with it.
• Ship, learn, improve. Optimize for speed and learning. Before over-engineering, ask "Can we undo this later?"
• Disagree with me. The people I trust most say "I think you're wrong." Bring your reasoning.
• Feedback is an optimistic act. Praise in public, constructive feedback in private and live. I want yours too.
• Written and async by default. Status in Slack, proposals written down, short meetings with agendas.
• Protected focus time, and show it early. Block your calendar. Rough drafts beat big reveals.
• Commitments mean something. If you're overextended, tell me early. The deadline is too late.
• Name your hunches. Data where we have it, intuition where we don't, labeled.
• Unblock each other. Intense and sustainable. We work hard, boundaries matter, and fifteen minutes that saves a teammate half a day is a good trade.
• Trust and speed. We're aiming for "no-look passes": a nod and half a sentence get the ball there.

Who You Are

• You've shipped real, production software. About 4+ years of engineering experience, full-stack leaning backend. We look at what you've built, not your degree or where you worked.
• You live in AI-native development workflows and can tell good AI output from bad. You've at least experimented with agent orchestration or software factories.
• You're scrappy and fast, and you get security and data flow right. At this stage we need both.
• You're comfortable with infrastructure and DevOps, or eager to learn it quickly. You'll own environments, deployments, and the systems others depend on.
• You've worked at an early-stage startup (Series A or earlier) or owned features end to end.
• You explain your work clearly, think about how people will use it, and will disagree with me when you feel strongly. You're humble and team-first.
• You care about helping people connect. A side project counts: your own CRM, a community, even a failed one.
• You're energized by ambiguity, and ready to put in the hours if the mission, impact, and reward are in line.
• Location: hybrid, with some days a week in the office. Seattle or the SF Bay Area, or in the process of relocating. No relocation assistance. Expect time in Seattle right after starting.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building platforms, internal tooling, or infrastructure that other builders (human or AI) work on top of, including software factories, orchestration, or spec-driven (and validated) output.
• Experience making AI-agent collaboration safer or more reliable (guardrails, evals, observability). Data security or SOC 2 experience.
• Bonus: AWS, GTM, sales-tech, or events/hospitality familiarity.

• As the first full-time hire, generous equity for a founding engineer, commensurate with experience, plus a $120K-$140K pre-seed salary that will increase after a follow-on raise. Health coverage and paid time off.
• Direct partnership with me and real influence over the product and how it gets built. The chance to build an AI-native software factory from the ground up. Investment in your growth over time.
• Start date: as soon as possible, mid-October ideally.
• Work authorization: We can support STEM OPT and simple authorizations like TN or E-3. We can't sponsor H-1B or other visas right now.

Finch is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.