Founding Engineer (Applied AI Lead)

• Equi is seeking a Founding Engineer and Head of Applied AI to serve as the lead builder across the entire company
• This is a foundational leadership role where you’ll design and build the software solutions that accelerate Equi’s growth, working across the investment team, operations, and go-to-market
• You will be the backbone of engineering at Equi, driving projects from ideation through execution across AI-powered systems, customer-facing applications, and internal tools
• This role sits at the intersection of AI engineering and application development: you’ll build RAG-based intelligence, automate complex investment workflows, and create new customer-facing applications on top of our data infrastructure
• This is a rare opportunity for someone fascinated by sophisticated investment strategies who wants to build technology that powers a rapidly scaling platform
• The role will evolve from hands-on building to eventually growing and leading the engineering team, while maintaining our vision of a small, flat organization where everyone stays close to the work
• Lead Builder Across the Company:
• Serve as the primary engineer and technical leader, building software solutions that accelerate growth across all teams
• Partner directly with the Investment Team, Operations, and GTM to identify high-impact opportunities for technology and automation
• Exercise significant autonomy, taking ownership of complex projects from conception through post-launch iteration
• Make critical technical decisions and architect scalable solutions for a growing platform
• Customer-Facing Applications:
• Translate complex user needs and business requirements into well-architected, scalable, maintainable, and user-friendly full-stack applications (Typescript, Next.js, Python, Postgres on GCP)
• Design, implement, and maintain performant and reliable APIs and backend services
• Develop exceptional user experiences for clients and partners
• AI Engineering:
• Ingest multi-format investment data and parse it into both human- and computer-digestible formats
• Use AI to perform investment analysis and provide recommendations to the human investment team
• Build workflows to automate human actions across the investment process
• Develop RAG-based intelligence systems to power internal and external applications
• Team Leadership & Growth:
• Act as the backbone of the engineering function, establishing technical direction and best practices
• Lead technical decision-making and architectural design discussions
• Proactively identify and advocate for process improvements and technology adoption
• Eventually grow and lead the engineering team while maintaining hands-on building responsibilities

Benefits

• Health insurance, including dental and vision plans
• Flexible holidays and a generous time off policy
• Learning and development budget- Data & Cloud Foundation: Solid understanding of data pipeline concepts (ETL/ELT) and data warehousing principles
• Full-Stack Proficiency: Proven track record of designing, building, deploying, operating, and maintaining complex full-stack web applications in production environments. Strong proficiency in Typescript, Next.js, and Python
• AI-Driven Engineering: Competent in AI-driven engineering workflows and can use them to deliver effectively; experience building AI-powered applications
• Collaboration & Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Product Acumen: Demonstrated ability to think critically about product strategy, understand user needs and pain points, and effectively translate them into technical solutions
• Experience: 5+ years of professional experience in software development, demonstrating progressive responsibility and impact
• Autonomy & Action Orientation: Proven ability to work independently with minimal supervision, navigate ambiguity effectively, and drive projects to completion with a strong sense of ownership and a bias for action
• Passion for investing: Experience can’t substitute for an innate curiosity and passion for the world of investing. We operate in the depths of it, so you better love it!
• Leadership Potential: Desire and ability to eventually grow and lead a small, high-performing engineering team
• Prior experience working in fintech, investment technology, or financial services
• Specific experience designing and scaling large-vol…