Fractional Full-Stack Software Engineer

Title: Fractional Full-Stack Software Engineer (15–30 hrs/week)

Company: Ontoly

Workplace type: Remote (within ±3 hours of Pacific Time)

Job type: Part-time, with pathway to Full-Time

Seniority: Mid to Senior

Industry: Climate tech, Software

Compensation: Competitive hourly rate + potential equity after a 3-month trial (1-year cliff / 4-year vest).

Path to full-time: Role is intended to evolve into full-time after our next fundraise (target: Spring 2026).

About Ontoly

Ontoly certifies carbon credits from building decarbonization and energy-efficiency projects. Designed for real-estate portfolios and building owners, our platform converts measured emissions reductions into financial-grade carbon assets.

Our solution includes:

• A secure data portal for project submission and owner onboarding
• Robust certification framework aligned with Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Market principles
• Automated GHG-quantification workflows with ~150 integrity checks
• A carbon registry that lists certified projects for purchase or retirement

By streamlining the path from emissions reduction to monetization, Ontoly helps clients unlock the financial value of sustainability investments while giving buyers transparent, auditable records.

Founder — Ashley Sarauer is Ontoly’s CEO and founder. She brings deep expertise across carbon markets, emissions accounting, and regulatory frameworks—including roles at Verra (the world’s largest carbon registry) and two Canadian governments focused on offset policy. At Verra, Ashley led the successful submission to the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), advancing high-integrity standards. Her work sits at the intersection of corporate and national accounting.

While not a career software engineer, Ashley personally built the first versions of the Next.js-based registry and data portal, committing code in GitHub (with Cursor assisting) to create a solid starting point for the engineer we hire. She also designed the database schemas and has a deep working understanding of the data flows and processes to be implemented at each stage of the Ontoly portal.

The role would involve working directly with the Founder to build out the next stages of development.

The Role

Own and evolve the software behind Ontoly’s carbon registry and client data portal. You’ll design and develop features end-to-end, harden security, and improve performance and cost as we scale—on a flexible, fractional schedule (15–30 hrs/week). The intent is for this role to convert to full-time after our next fundraise (target: Spring 2026) if it’s a mutual fit.

Responsibilities

• Build across React + Next.js (App Router), TypeScript, Vercel, Supabase (Auth/Postgres/Storage), and GCP BigQuery / Python where appropriate.
• Improve the client data portal: secure onboarding, document upload flows, RBAC/RLS, data validation, and clean UX.
• Extend the registry: issuance/retirement flows, serialisation, receipts, admin tooling, and traceable audit trails.
• Speed up quantification: profile bottlenecks, optimize SQL, and evaluate BigQuery ML or Python pipelines for computationally heavy steps.
• Encode and maintain ~150 integrity checks aligned with ICVCM principles (validation, exception handling, alerting).
• Make pragmatic cost/performance trade-offs across Vercel/Supabase/GCP; instrument basic observability (logging, metrics, alerts).
• Collaborate on schema design, data migration strategy, and privacy/security controls (RLS, least-privilege, secrets).
• Add tests and maintain a steady release cadence via CI/CD.
• Note, we are not building tokenization/blockchain systems at this time, but we will consider product suggestions for future development in this role.

Requirements

• 3–7+ years professional software experience with meaningful full-stack ownership
• Strong with React + Next.js, TypeScript, and Vercel deploys
• Hands-on with Supabase (Auth, Postgres, Storage), SQL schema design, and Row-Level Security
• Experience with GCP BigQuery (SQL/UDFs; ML a plus) or Python data pipelines
• Clear communicator with strong interpersonal skills; collaborative and product-minded
• Available 15–30 hours/week, mostly within ±3 hours of Pacific Time

Nice to have

• Prior startup experience and comfort with ambiguity
• Exposure to energy/climate/carbon or metered building datasets
• Testing (Vitest/Jest), CI/CD, and basic observability
• Sensible use of AI tools (e.g., Cursor) with awareness of their limits

This is a great fit if you…

• Enjoy being hands-on with a focus on writing code
• Are happy working day-to-day in a full-stack role using strongly typed languages; open to AI assist but mindful of limits
• Want to work as part of a small, multi-disciplinary team and collaborate closely
• Want to work on something new—the biggest product and company decisions still lie ahead
• Enjoy the uncertainty and unpredictability that comes with an early-stage company
• Are keen to learn deeply about our customers, their problems, and co-create solutions

This might not be the right role if you…

• Prefer larger organisation structures and a narrow scope
• Want a predictable roadmap with fully pre-scoped tickets
• Prefer a slower pace—we’re solving live customer problems
• Expect the perks of a large, established tech company

Compensation & Benefits

• Fractional contract: 15–30 hrs/week, fully remote (within ±3h PT), flexible schedule
• Compensation: competitive hourly rate + potential equity after a 3-month trial (standard 1-year cliff / 4-year vesting)
• Real product ownership, direct customer exposure, and visible climate impact
• Clear growth path; the role can expand into Lead/CTO responsibilities over time
• Intent to convert to full-time after our next fundraise (target Spring 2026)

We’ve raised an initial equity round and remain intentionally lean—ideal for builders who value autonomy and outcomes.

Hiring Process

1. Intro (30 min) with the CEO — mutual fit and ways of working
2. Technical session (60–90 min) — test of coding expertise (language of your choice): structure, tests, performance
3. Product interview (45 min) — approach to customer problems, trade-offs, ownership

Why Ontoly

·      Direct climate impact, modern stack, real ownership.

·      Fully remote, flexible 15–30 hrs/week now, path to full-time in Spring 2026.

·      Opportunity to grow scope; potential leadership track as we scale.

How to apply

Apply via this short form (résumé/CV required): https://forms.office.com/r/UBhTPP3yv6

Please apply by September 30. We review applications on a rolling basis and will close the role once we find the right fit—early applications encouraged.