Founding AI Product Engineer

Founding AI Product Engineer(s)

Location: Capital Region, NY (Hybrid Preferred, Remote Considered)

Position: Part-Time (15–25 hours/week to start), with the opportunity to grow into a full-time founding engineering role.

Compensation: Hourly or project-based compensation commensurate with experience. Potential for long-term growth and equity for the right individual.

Expected Start Date: Flexible (Summer/Fall 2026)

About the Company

This company is being founded by the owner and operator of Simone’s Kitchen, a rapidly growing restaurant concept originating in the Capital Region.

Over the past several years, we’ve managed hundreds of maintenance requests across multiple restaurant locations and experienced firsthand how fragmented and outdated the service industry remains.

When something breaks, restaurants still rely on Google searches, phone calls, voicemails, and spreadsheets.

We’re building the platform we always wished existed.

Unlike many startups that begin with only an idea, we’re building alongside real customers and real restaurants. That means you’ll have the opportunity to see your work tested, validated, and improved by actual users from day one.

About the Opportunity

We’re building something that doesn’t exist.

Every restaurant depends on dozens of critical systems operating flawlessly every day—from refrigeration and HVAC to plumbing, electrical, cooking equipment, fire suppression, networking, security, and more.

Yet when one of those systems fails, restaurants are still forced into an outdated process of searching Google, calling multiple service companies, leaving voicemails, waiting for callbacks, comparing quotes, and hoping someone is available.

Despite billions of dollars being spent annually on restaurant maintenance and repair, there is still no modern technology platform purpose-built to manage this experience.

We’re changing that.

Our vision is to build the operating system for restaurant service and maintenance—a platform that allows restaurants to quickly request service, connect with vetted professionals, authorize payments, communicate throughout the repair process, maintain equipment history, store warranties and documentation, and eventually leverage AI to help prevent failures before they happen.

We’re currently building our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and are looking for Founding AI Product Engineers to help bring this vision to life.

This isn’t a traditional software engineering position.

This is an opportunity to help architect, design, and build an entire product—and ultimately an entire company—from the ground up.

What You’ll Be Building

You’ll help design and develop a modern platform that includes:

• Restaurant and service provider accounts
• Intelligent service request and dispatch workflows
• Equipment and asset management
• Photo, video, messaging, and real-time communication
• Payments, invoicing, and customer billing
• Customer and technician rating systems
• Administrative dashboards and reporting
• AI-powered workflows and automation

Our initial product focuses on connecting restaurants with trusted service professionals quickly and seamlessly.

Our long-term vision is significantly larger.

We believe every restaurant should have one place to manage every repair, every piece of equipment, every warranty, every invoice, every technician, every inspection, every maintenance schedule, and eventually every AI-powered recommendation that helps keep their business running.

You’ll have the opportunity to shape that vision from its earliest stages.

This Is NOT a Traditional Development Job

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing software development.

We’re not looking for someone who wants to spend months writing every line of code manually.

We’re looking for someone who embraces modern AI-assisted development and understands how to use today’s tools to build exceptional software faster and more intelligently.

The ideal candidate enjoys leveraging AI to accelerate development while applying engineering judgment where it matters most—architecture, scalability, security, testing, and user experience.

If your first instinct is to ask,

“How can AI help me build this better and faster?”

…you’re probably the type of person we’re looking for.

Technologies You May Work With

We’re intentionally technology-agnostic during the early stages, but experience with any of the following is valuab…