Senior Software Engineer

Founding Lead Engineer (AI/ML • path to CTO)

Prize helps U.S. military veterans plan and execute on their next chapter—career, school, benefits, life.

If you’re a builder who likes owning the problem end‑to‑end, you’ll like this seat. You’ll work directly with our CEO (former Marine F/A‑18 pilot → Meta GenAI Software Engineer) and a small group of mentors across engineering, design, operations, and leadership.

• MVP is complete. Private beta starts the week of Aug 25, 2025.
• Public launch of platform on Veterans Day (Nov 11, 2025).
• We’ve curated 8,000+ resources and are building a quality score to surface the best help.
• Veterans preferred.

What you’ll work on

• Ship the AI Coach. Design intents, dialog, plan generation, and clear, explainable recommendations.
• Create a delightful experience. Veterans are used to dealing with outdated services – let’s change this.
• Make our graph more useful. Retrieval and reasoning over Neo4j/Memgraph; build ingestion/dedup and ranking that actually helps people.
• Build with design, fast. Pair with design to turn user feedback into shippable experiences in days, not weeks.
• Own the product surface.

Your technical playground

• Web: React + TypeScript
• Mobile: React Native + TypeScript
• Server: Python/Django
• Cloud/Infra: GCP, GKE (Kubernetes), Docker; CI/CD, observability, cost discipline
• Analytics: Firebase (Analytics, Crashlytics, Remote Config)
• Protect users. PII handling, threat modeling, and guardrails for AI safety and quality.

How we work (and treat each other)

Our values are real and they show up daily: Honesty (straight talk, clear expectations), Love (care for people first), Growth (learn and level up together), Collaboration (every voice matters), Excellence (high bar with empathy). You can expect mentorship from day one, blameless postmortems, mental‑health‑first flexibility, and fast feedback loops with our veteran community.

You might be a great fit if you…

• Have ~5+ years shipping production software in small, fast teams.
• Are fluent across React/TypeScript, React Native, and Python/Django.
• Know your way around GCP, GKE/Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, and monitoring.
• Enjoy co‑creating with design and running tight experiments.
• Have built data‑heavy features (search/ranking/geospatial) and care about product quality.
• Are willing to do the job and leverage a growth mindset to learn things you don't already know.

Big plus (AI/ML): you’ve designed or led LLM/AI systems (RAG, agents/tools, embeddings, evaluation, safety/guardrails), worked with Vertex AI or similar, and/or used graph algorithms in Neo4j/Memgraph. MLOps on GCP is helpful.

Working style we’re targeting

We’re looking for high initiating drive, comfort with change, and urgency with rigor. In Predictive Index terms: High A / Low C / High D. If you naturally take the lead, don’t get rattled by shifting constraints, and still protect quality and safety, you’ll thrive here.

What success looks like

• Weeks 1–2: You’re shipping; beta paths are stable; a user‑visible win is live.
• 30 days: AI Coach alpha behind a flag; Firebase events cover core flows; SLOs in place.
• ~90 days (launch): Veterans Day release is reliable, measurable, fast; graph‑backed retrieval lifts activation; the AI Coach handles core intents with transparent explanations.
• 180 days: Real engagement/retention gains; an evaluation harness + red‑team playbook; a light hiring plan.

Compensation & setup

• Equity‑first founding role (meaningful founder‑level equity).
• Pre‑funding, pre‑revenue; cash comp follows our seed.
• Remote with EST‑friendly collaboration hours.
• 6‑month mutual trial with four clear outcomes: convert (Lead Engineer or CTO path), extend, advisory‑only, or professionally part ways.

We welcome all backgrounds—veterans and military families strongly encouraged.

How to apply (show your drive)

Send LinkedIn/GitHub (or portfolio) to prize@prizeapp.io or use LinkedIn Easy Apply.

Add 3 short bullets that show:

1. Where you led without permission,
2. Where you shipped through changing constraints, and
3. How you moved fast and kept the quality/safety bar.
4. Optional: share your PI profile if you have one.