Founding Full Stack Developer Location: SF Bay / Hybrid (Must be able to commute 2x per week to San Jose-CA)
Compensation: $60K - $120K / 0.25% - 2.5%
About the company Ayraa Inc. is on a mission to democratize enterprise search & knowledge discovery. Ayraa raised over $5M of seed capital and is backed by a strong investor network committed to building a powerful player in the enterprise search space. The founders are serial entrepreneurs who recently scaled & exited an AI startup. Ayraa has created a unique combination of a personal search engine for employees to increase their productivity & a knowledge management platform for the company's leadership team to eliminate information silos & overload.
Ayraa has spent about three years building a robust platform based on extensive market research & feedback. We have hit product market fit & generating revenue - and investing in an entrepreneurial, founding full-stack engineer who can move swiftly with the company to build on this momentum.
About the role This role is for a full-stack engineer to join our small founding team in the US in the San Jose area. We have a team of 10 engineers in Pune, India, who have built multiple products cohesively centered around knowledge management & enterprise search. This role is a unique opportunity to join the stage zero of an SF Bay rocketship poised for take-off - as the first US dev hire.
Why the "founding" engineer title? You will work closely with the head of engineering and the co-founder/CEO, who are both deeply technical. As the developer in the US (SF bay), we are specifically modeling this role for someone choosing to work in a fast-paced, scrappy startup - with fluid processes, unpredictable work hours, & bleeding-edge raw tech, and for someone who enjoys the thrill of taking risks in the pursuit of the promised land. We are an early-revenue, seed-stage company, and the title, compensation & equity is our way of signaling alignment.
Core Responsibilities- Design and develop robust, scalable backend applications using Java and Spring framework with the speed and agility required in a high-velocity environment
- Contribute to frontend development with ReactJS, ensuring responsive and performant user interfaces while meeting aggressive deadlines
- Architect and implement RESTful APIs and microservices that can scale with our rapid growth
- Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code following industry best practices, making quick decisions to balance quality and speed
- Collaborate with product managers and designers to translate requirements into technical solutions in a fast-evolving product landscape
- Support DevOps processes including CI/CD pipelines, containerization, cloud infrastructure, monitoring systems, and infrastructure-as-code
- Handle production issue management, including troubleshooting, root cause analysis, on-call rotations, and performance optimization in a startup where every minute of downtime matters
- Contribute to AI integration initiatives through prompt engineering, application integration, and response evaluation, adapting quickly to emerging technologies
Required- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
- 1+ years of professional experience in Java development, specifically Spring framework
- Experience with relational databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Redis)
- Working knowledge of ReactJS and modern JavaScript/TypeScript
- Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP)
- Experience with API design, development, and integration
- Strong problem-solving and debugging skills
- Excellent communication skills and ability to work with distributed teams
- Demonstrated ability to thrive in fast-paced environments, manage competing priorities, and deliver results under pressure
Standout Qualifications- Experience with microservices architecture
- Knowledge of Elasticsearch or similar search technologies
- Familiarity with AI/LLM frameworks and prompt engineering
- Familiarity with Co-Pilot/Cursor or any other AI-based IDEs
- Prior startup experience and comfort with ambiguity and rapid change