Padmi

Founding Engineer

Remote · India$25k–$35k/yrPosted 2 months ago
Software engineeringSeniorFull Time
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About the role

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We’re looking for a Founding Engineer to help build the core systems that power Questom.

This is not a framework-specialist role. It’s not about perfect abstractions on day one. It is about systems thinking, ownership, and the ability to stitch together complex infrastructure into something that works — fast.

You’ll be one of a very small group shaping not just the product, but how the company builds.

What You’ll Do

  • Build systems that connect everything

  • Design and build high-performance systems that connect:

  • Communication platforms (voice, SMS, email, chat)

  • Agentic workflows

  • External tools like CRMs and internal APIs

  • Stitch together APIs, workflows, and agents into cohesive systems that actually run in production

  • Think deeply about how these systems scale across many customers with different data sources and configurations

  • Build agentic workflows

  • Create workflows where agents:

  • Handle live conversations

  • Pull context from systems like Salesforce

  • Log outcomes in tools like HubSpot

  • Take real actions on behalf of users

  • Focus on giving agents the right information at the right time and designing systems that make this repeatable across customers

  • Turn ambiguity into working software

  • Start from half-baked ideas, rough customer conversations, or incomplete requirements

  • Ship a 90% working solution quickly

  • Iterate toward something more general, scalable, and high quality

  • Own what you build

  • Take end-to-end ownership: design → build → ship → improve

  • Break things thoughtfully — and fix them yourself

  • Make judgment calls without needing constant guidance

  • What Success Looks Like

  • In the first 30 days

  • Sit in a few customer conversations

  • Identify a real pain point

  • Propose a product or feature to solve it

  • Build and ship an end-to-end solution that delivers real value

  • In the first 90 days

  • Take learnings from multiple customer builds

  • Start shaping more general-purpose systems

  • Help lay the foundation for a platform that can scale to many customers — and eventually very large companies

  • How We Build

  • We use modern tools aggressively and expect you to learn quickly:

  • Agentic workflow frameworks

  • Communication infrastructure

  • AI agent SDKs

  • We rely heavily on coding agents and automation — curiosity and systems understanding matter more than syntax mastery

  • We build fast, then make it better

  • We’re opinionated, iterative, and comfortable changing direction when a simpler solution delivers customer value

  • What Matters (and What Doesn’t)

  • What matters a lot

  • Systems thinking

  • Ownership

  • Comfort with ambiguity

  • Curiosity and fast learning

  • Product taste (what’s worth building vs not)

  • Respect for how other people think

  • What doesn’t matter much

  • Deep expertise in any single framework or language

  • Pixel-perfect UI work

  • Writing perfect SQL by hand

  • Knowing our exact stack on day one

  • If you understand how modern web systems, APIs, workflows, and agents fit together — and you’re excited to learn the rest — you’re in great shape.

  • How We Work

  • Fast, opinionated, iterative

  • Disagreements are encouraged and happen openly

  • We build first, think later — but we do think

  • You won’t be micromanaged

You will be trusted with real responsibility early

Who You Are

You likely describe yourself as:

Extremely curious

Highly independent

Comfortable operating without a map

Someone who enjoys connecting dots across systems

High-EQ and collaborative

You want to be deeply involved — not just shipping tickets, but helping build a company.

Who Should Not Apply

If you need clear specs and guardrails to do your best work

If you prefer working in isolation

If you’re uncomfortable with constant ambiguity

If you don’t enjoy discussing ideas, systems, and tradeoffs with a small team

If you want a narrow role instead of broad ownership

If reading this makes you feel slightly intimidated but very excited , that’s intentional — and probably a good sign.

One address, no account. We’ll tell you when matching roles go live.