Location: Austin
Company: Little Engine — AI-powered back office for solo service providers
Type: Full-time
Level: Senior / Founding Engineer
Compensation: $150,000-$200,000 with up to 1.5% of the business
Start Date: ASAP
About Little Engine
Little Engine is building the AI-native back office for solo service providers — personal trainers, stylists, tutors, massage therapists, dog walkers, and more. Our mobile app automates scheduling, payments, and client communication — entirely over SMS — replacing a mess of Venmo, Notepad, and texting with a clean, intelligent assistant that works behind the scenes.
We just closed a multi-million dollar pre-seed.
The team includes repeat founders who’ve built and sold award-winning apps — including one of Apple’s Best Apps of the Year.
The Role
We’re hiring a zero-to-one backend engineer who’s equal parts architect, builder, and AI systems thinker — someone who can design elegant infrastructure, ship real-time product features, and push the boundaries of agentic intelligence.
You’ll lead development on the core backend infrastructure that powers:
- Multi-agent orchestration (user agents, client agents, task flows)
- Contextual memory management (long-term + ephemeral)
- In-product AI experiences that are fast, resilient, and feel magical
- Secure and scalable systems built on top of FastAPI + Postgres
- Integration of external APIs: Twilio (SMS), Stripe, Google Calendar, etc.
- Performance tuning, observability, and reliability of our core AI assistant
You Might Be a Good Fit If…
- Have deep python experience proven by building backends serving thousands of users
- Have worked on or with agentic AI systems — Lanegraph, Letta (former memGPT), Google’s agent framework, CrewAI, LangGraph, etc.
- You can lead a feature delivery from a concept to delivery to production not forgetting about observability and measuring impact on users
- Have experience managing AI memory systems, context injection, embeddings, or hybrid memory architectures
- Understand real-time, user-facing product architecture — how infrastructure and UX are deeply linked
- Have strong product instincts and care about the people you’re building for
- Thrive in fast-moving startup environments where you can be both player and coach
- Have experience building and scaling early-stage systems and writing code that lasts
Tech Stack
- Python
- FastAPI (everything’s typed and async)
- PostgreSQL (managed via SQLAlchemy + Alembic)
- Redis (caching, queuing)
- Pinecone / vector DBs (for memory management)
- OpenAI, Claude, Leta, custom tooling
You Will Work With…
- A PhD AI/ML engineer (R&D, infrastructure, models, memory systems)
- A multi-time founder with design-first, product-led DNA
- A senior React Native engineer who sweats over the details
Why Join Now?
- The product is real, going into the hands of early users
- You’ll help shape the architecture and direction of a major piece of our platform
- You’ll have meaningful equity and full visibility into the roadmap
- You’ll work on a craft-driven team that obsesses over the details — from AI latency to micro-interactions
Compensation Range: $150K - $200K