Software Engineer

The role

We're hiring a Software Engineer to own engineering at DealTree as we prepare to bring the product to our first beta customers. You'll work directly with the founder and take work from an initial problem through a working demo into production. You'll build across the Python backend, databases, AI agents, and customer interfaces, while coordinating AI coding agents and setting engineering standards.

The founder will focus on customers and bringing the product to market while continuing to work with you on solving customer and product problems using modern technologies. Together, you'll decide what to build. As the team grows, you'll help recruit and mentor engineers and design systems that scale with the company.

This is a hands-on role that will require you to actively work to solve real-world problems and design and implement new features by yourself on a regular basis.

What you'll do

Own engineering delivery and technical standards

• Take work from the initial problem through demo, production release, and improvement. Work with the founder to set priorities. Own foundational decisions about architecture, tooling, infrastructure, security, and engineering practices.
• Fix bugs, support customers, and maintain infrastructure.
• Balance quick experiments with careful engineering of core features.

Build dependable research tools and evaluate AI product capabilities

• Design and build APIs, databases, and data gathering processes for company search and research. Keep each customer's data isolated in a shared application.
• Use language model APIs, including Anthropic Claude, for tool calling, structured output, and defined product tasks. Design prompts and evaluations that test accuracy and guard against unsupported answers.
• Improve how product agents work together, use tools, and handle failed or incomplete results.

Build usable interfaces and an engineering team

• Explain technical tradeoffs to customers and non-technical colleagues with patience, and use their feedback to improve the product.
• Document decisions, share knowledge, and establish how the engineering team works.
• Help recruit and mentor future engineers, including people whose strengths exceed your own.

What success looks like

• Product features move from working demos into dependable production use, with customer data kept separate and changes supported by test evidence.
• Customers can research companies that fit their investment criteria and identify people who could make an introduction.
• AI capabilities perform their intended tasks, with accuracy evaluated and failed or incomplete results handled deliberately.
• Work produced by AI coding agents meets the team's acceptance tests and code review standards before release.
• Customer feedback informs product priorities, and documented engineering practices help future teammates contribute.

You'll thrive in this role if you

• Like a challenge and can think through and break down complex problems into systematic solutions.
• Take initiative, follow through consistently, and take responsibility for resolving problems.
• Can work through incomplete information and judge when to test an idea quickly and when a core feature needs more careful engineering.
• Explore how an idea could work, ask useful questions, and listen to understand different perspectives.
• Give specific, respectful feedback on the work. Accept critique, acknowledge when you're wrong, and change your approach when the evidence calls for it.
• Raise mistakes and disagreements early and address them directly. Share context, document your work, and give people credit for their contributions.
• Care about the team's results and DealTree's long-term success, and enjoy building alongside other people.

Qualifications

Required

• Examples of software you've taken from an initial problem through a demo into production, with a clear explanation of your own contribution.
• Strong Python backend experience with FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, and PostgreSQL, including transactions, row locking, and Alembic migrations.
• Experience shipping full-stack features with TypeScript, React, and Next.js, and building software that keeps multiple customers' data isolated.
• Hands-on experience gathering data and integrating third-party APIs, including rate limits, retries, background jobs, and cost tracking.
• Experience with LLM providers such as Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, or equivalent over APIs.
• Ability to coordinate multiple AI coding agents: define tasks and acceptance tests, assign work, review code and test evidence, and control merge order.
• Experience with PostgreSQL integration tests, checks that expose faulty code, browser testing, and continuous integration in GitHub Actions.
• Product judgment for business customers, including clear empty and error states, plain customer copy, and spend and usage controls.
• Clear communication in English with customers and non-technical colleagues.

We welcome examples from employment, independent projects, or other settings where you can explain the work you owned.

Preferred

• Knowledge of graphs and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which gives language models relevant source material to use in their answers.
• Experience building agent or copilot products, or working with business-to-business companies and contact data.
• Private equity, finance, or financial technology familiarity. The private equity workflow can be learned on the job.

Current technical stack

• Next.js / TypeScript
• Python / FastAPI
• SQLAlchemy / Alembic
• PostgreSQL
• Docker
• Anthropic Claude

You'll work across this stack, with particular depth in the backend, data isolation, applied AI, and end-to-end feature delivery.

Why join DealTree

• Work towards shaping the future of an early-stage company.
• Ownership of technical decisions across data, AI systems, and the customer interface.
• Build software to solve problems around specific research and relationship problems for small investment teams.
• Help turn feedback from early customers into product decisions.
• Develop technical depth across company search, applied AI, and relationship mapping while shaping engineering practices and mentoring future teammates.
• Competitive salary plus meaningful equity participation.