{"id":3722690,"url":"https://alion.io/job/whym-remote-founding-engineer","title":"[Remote] Founding Engineer","company":{"id":4506359,"name":"Whym","domain":"whym.co","url":"https://alion.io/company/whym-3","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":null,"truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"React Native","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true}],"status":"closed","first_seen_at":"2026-11-04T01:29:56Z","employer_posted_date":null,"last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T09:38:30Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":"2026-11-04T09:38:30Z","days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"not_scored","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Whym is hiring a Founding Engineer to build its product across backend services, data systems, infrastructure, and mobile and web apps. The role also contributes to product decisions, prototypes, user research, and customer support at an early-stage startup.\n\nResponsibilities\nBackend services and APIs. Design and ship the services Whym runs on. Data modeling, async work, performance, reliability. You own how the client and server fit together\nData and pipelines. Build the plumbing that moves activity data, user signals, and analytics through the system. Partner with Lynn, our Head of Search and Discovery, on the data layer that feeds ranking and eval\nMobile and web. Contribute to the apps users hold in their hands. Architecture, performance, and feature work across mobile and web. You do not need to lead this surface, but you do need to be able to ship on it\nInfra and developer experience. Touch CI, observability, and deploy when it unblocks the team. Raise the floor on how fast we can ship without breaking things\nPrototypes and research. Build throwaway prototypes to answer product questions. Sit in on user research and let what you hear change what you build\nProduct and design calls. Make product and technical decisions independently when needed. You have good product sense\n\nSkills\nWe expect most of your past work to be backend, and we expect you to be excited about reaching into the client when the product demands it\nWe are looking for a strong generalist who has built serious backend systems and is comfortable getting their hands on the apps too\nYou should find that appealing, not beneath you\nYou do not need to lead this surface, but you do need to be able to ship on it\nMake product and technical decisions independently when needed. You have good product sense\n8+ years in engineering, with substantial full-stack work shipped to production\nStrong backend foundations. You can design a service, model the data, reason about async behavior, and debug a performance regression. You do not need a platform team to get work done\nYou have shipped frontend or mobile code in production and can hold your own on a React, React Native, or native iOS/Android codebase. You do not need to be a specialist here, but you do need to be willing and capable\nStrong product instinct. You connect what you build to what users feel. You know which detail matters and can say why in plain language\nAI-native. You use modern AI tools in your daily work and have opinions about which ones earn their keep. You know what AI slop looks like and you do not turn it in as final work\nClear writer and communicator. You document decisions. You disagree without posturing\nComfortable with ambiguity. You thrive at early stage, and drive forward towards good outcomes\nHigh agency. You notice what needs doing and do it without waiting to be asked\nIf you have spent time as a frontend or mobile engineer somewhere along the way, that's a real plus\nTime spent as a frontend or mobile engineer, with shipped consumer-facing work you can point to\nExperience with search, feed, recommender, or ranking systems, and comfort working next to our Head of Search and Discovery's domain\nOffline-first, real-time, or location-based product experience\nVoice, multimodal, or agent-driven interface work\nDesign, motion, or interaction-design sensibility that goes beyond engineering\nInfra and developer-experience instincts — CI, observability, deploy pipelines you have actually owned\nExperience at an early-stage startup where you wore many hats\nSystems thinker. You build processes that scale. You document what you build\n\nBenefits\nHybrid work: in person three days a week, with the other days reserved for focused remote work.\nExceptional candidates may work fully remotely.\n\nCompany Overview\nWhym is the AI-powered social concierge that helps you connect with your real friends in the real world. It was founded in 2026, and is headquartered in , with a workforce of 2-10 employees. Its website is https://whym.co.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4073,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-04T03:20:50Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-11-04T09:38:30Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":null,"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/whym-remote-founding-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/whym-remote-founding-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-07T05:02:48Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":12278,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-08T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":4506359},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=4506359"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fwhym-remote-founding-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fwhym-remote-founding-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fwhym-remote-founding-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/whym-remote-founding-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwhym-remote-founding-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3722690}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"whym.co","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3722690},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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