Lead Founding Engineer - LowRateCo

LOWRATECO - FOUNDING LEAD ENGINEER We are seeking a highly motivated and hands-on Founding Lead Engineer to build and own the core technology platform of a venture-backed, early-stage company disrupting the multi-trillion-dollar mortgage industry. This is a rare opportunity to move an entire industry by architecting an end-to-end AI automation solution. You will be the first in-house engineering hire, responsible for migrating our product from an external agency to an internal, scalable platform, and then rapidly building out the next generation of our AI-driven features. ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES: - Hands-on Engineering and Architecture: Act as the primary engineer, leading the design, development, testing, and deployment of our mission-critical, cloud-native platform. - AI Agent Development & Integration: Integrate, scale, and manage proprietary and third-party AI agents (LLMs like Gemini/GPT) to automate core business functions, including sales, processing, and underwriting. - System Ownership & Migration: Take ownership of the existing infrastructure (GCP, Python/FireStore, Salesforce integration) and strategically plan and execute the migration from the current external vendor to a robust, in-house system. - Technical Roadmapping & Decisioning: Drive all major technical decisions, setting the standards for code quality, architectural integrity, and security from the ground up. - Team Building: Play a critical role in defining the future engineering team structure and participate in the recruitment, mentoring, and scaling of the future engineering staff. - Product Collaboration: Work closely with the CEO and product stakeholders to translate an ambitious product vision—specifically the transition to full AI processing and underwriting—into technical specifications and delivered features. WHAT YOU BRING - Experience: 4+ years of professional experience in full-stack software development, with a strong emphasis on backend and cloud architecture. - Startup DNA: Proven experience working in a high-growth, early-stage startup environment or as a Founding Engineer, demonstrating the ability to thrive with high autonomy and limited resources. - Technical Foundation: Deep experience with modern cloud environments, preferably GCP, and expertise in backend languages like Python (relevant for AI/ML work) or similar distributed systems languages. - System Design: Strong background in designing and deploying cloud-native, distributed systems capable of handling high transaction volumes and integrating multiple external APIs. - Product Mindset: Ability to quickly understand complex business needs and apply a product-first approach to engineering solutions, focusing on speed and value delivery. - Founding Engineer Traits: - Exceptional self-starter and problem-solver. - Comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration. - A strong bias for action and delivery. WHAT WE OFFER - Significant Equity: Generous founder-level equity compensation for taking on a foundational role. - Massive Impact: The chance to change a 100-year-old industry and work on complex, high-impact AI challenges. - High Visibility: Direct collaboration with the CEO, VCs, and key partners like Rocket Mortgage. - Competitive Salary: A competitive base salary, targeting the $150k - $180k range, commensurate with experience and potential.