Founding Engineer

NO SALARY until our seed round closes (active round). Equity-first role. Read "The Deal" before applying.Global trade is a $2T+ industry that moves the world, and it still runs on spreadsheets, endless email threads, and fax-era software. Everyone agrees it's broken. We're fixing it.aradus is the AI operations layer for global trade. We sit on top of the systems importers and exporters already run (ERP, TMS, WMS) and put intelligent agents to work across them: watching, recommending, and acting on the operational mess in between. We don't replace those systems; we make them work.Where we actually are: We built the product and put it in front of customers. We went from zero to paying revenue in under a quarter. The codebase is live in production, our agents process real shipments and documents every day, and the feedback loop with users is running. This is not a concept.We're a small, deeply technical founding team, and we're hiring our first engineer.---The RoleThis isn't a role where you pull well-defined tickets from a backlog. As Founding Engineer, you'll operate across the entire stack, make foundational architectural decisions, and ship relentlessly.You'll work directly with the founders to shape the product, the engineering culture, and the trajectory of the company. You'll identify what actually matters, build it, and iterate against real-world friction from real users.What You'll OwnAutonomous AI systems. Architect agents that process messy, unstructured trade data, execute complex multi-step workflows, and build organizational memory over time. We're not building chatbot wrappers.Resilient data pipelines. Design scalable ingestion and reconciliation pipelines across third-party integrations (carriers, ERPs, customs, banking) with strict idempotency, deduplication, and retry strategies.Core platform architecture. Drive development across a multi-tenant Next.js/TypeScript frontend and a Go backend (chi, huma, pgx): complex domain logic, real-time syncs, and event-driven background job orchestration.AI infrastructure. Design the primitives our agents and pipelines stand on: modular tool layers, reusable extraction frameworks, evaluation harnesses, prompt and schema versioning, and the abstractions that let us add a new agent or document type in hours instead of weeks. As the surface area grows, getting these primitives right compounds.Product trajectory. Talk to users, learn the deep complexities of global trade, and translate those insights directly into the codebase.---Who You AreA builder of agentic systems. You've moved beyond basic prompts. You understand tool calling, multi-step reasoning, structured outputs, and context management, and you've shipped real agentic systems in production, in any modern stackAn infrastructure thinker. You instinctively reach for primitives, modularity, and clean abstractions, designing the underlying AI infrastructure so the system gets faster to extend as it grows, not slower.Startup DNA. You bias toward action. You ruthlessly cut scope to ship today while still investing in architecture so it doesn't collapse at scale.Frontend-strong, comfortable across the stack. You have deep hands-on experience with Next.js and React and can ship polished, snappy product UI fast. This is where we most need you. You're comfortable in the backend too (Go, Postgres, APIs, background jobs), and willing to pick up Go where you don't already know it; our existing engineer owns the deep backend, so it's a place you contribute, not where you carry the load. Our frontend is TypeScript/Next.js and our backend is Go.Bonus PointsYou've worked in supply chain, logistics, freight, or trade. As an engineer at a 3PL, freight forwarder, carrier, customs platform, or importer/exporter, you understand BLs, POs, invoices, containers, and the operational mess we're automating away. You won't need a glossary on day one.You've been a founder before. Even if it didn't work out, you have deep empathy for the pace, stakes, and extreme ownership of the zero-to-one stage.You've taken AI to production. You've deployed, monitored, and scaled agentic systems in live environments, well beyond local scripts and toy projects.---The DealWe're moving fast and completely transparent about where we stand.Cash compensation: not yet. We can't pay a salary today. A full, competitive base salary kicks in the moment our seed round closes. Until then, we're asking you to bet on aradus the way the founders are: with your time, your equity, and your conviction.Equity: founding-level and meaningful. You're our first engineering hire, and the equity reflects exactly that.The upside. A ground-floor seat to rewire a multi-trillion-dollar industry. A live product with paying customers. Revenue on the board. A short, fast path from "build the thing" to "scale the thing" once we close.We're looking for someone who wants to join full-time the moment we raise, and is willing to come in early to help us get there.