Afterly

THE ROLE

Senior full-stack engineer reporting directly to the founder. High autonomy, high trust, high ownership. You'll lead the application layer of a complex consumer platform that integrates with a sophisticated AI backend. Working alongside the founder-architect and an AI system that handles the core intelligence, your job is to own the rest of the stack — application UI, API layer, database integrations, third-party services, admin tooling, and the operational systems that keep the product running.

IN ADDITION TO BASE PAY: BONUS / PERFORMANCE INCENTIVES AVAILABLE.

We have a working core product. We need a senior engineer who can take the application side from "early build" to "production-ready at scale" and continue leading as we add new modules.

WHAT YOU'LL BE IN CHARGE OF

- Consumer-facing application built on a modern serverless React framework with App Router architecture

- API layer that bridges the application to the AI engine and external services

- Database design and integrations (Postgres-based BaaS platform)

- Payment processing integration and subscription management

- Transactional email and notification systems

- File storage, document handling, and signed URL workflows

- Marketplace operations including listings, transactions, and vendor flows

- Admin and back-office tooling for support and operations

- Background jobs, scheduled tasks, and queued workflows

- Authentication, session management, and authorization

- Production infrastructure, deploys, monitoring, and incident response

THE STACK

- TypeScript end to end

- Next.js App Router on Railway

- React with Tailwind for the UI layer

- Postgres-based serverless backend platform with built-in auth, storage, realtime, and edge functions

- Stripe for payments and subscriptions

- Resend or similar for transactional email

- GitHub for source control with branch-based deploys

- Custom AI service layer (you integrate with it, you don't build it — that's owned separately)

- Standard observability tooling (we'll add Sentry or equivalent)

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Required:

- 7+ years building production web applications, with at least 3 years in a senior or lead role

- Deep expertise in TypeScript and modern React framework patterns (App Router, server components, streaming)

- Strong relational database design and SQL chops, especially Postgres

- Experience integrating with payment processors (Stripe specifically a plus)

- Experience with auth flows, RLS policies, JWT, and shared-secret service-to-service auth

- Experience building and operating multi-module consumer applications (not just single-purpose tools)

- Experience with API design, both consuming third-party APIs and exposing your own

- Comfortable shipping in serverless and edge-function environments

- Production deploys, rollback procedures, monitoring, and incident response experience

- US-based, US business hours, fluent professional English

Strongly preferred:

- Experience integrating LLM or AI services into consumer applications (streaming responses, structured outputs, action handling)

- Experience with marketplace platforms (multi-sided, vendor onboarding, listing logic, transactional fees)

- Experience building admin and back-office systems for non-technical operators

- Experience with multi-tenant data models and complex permission structures

- Experience with file upload flows, document storage, signed URLs, and PDF handling

- Background-job and queue patterns (cron jobs, scheduled work, retry logic)

- Experience working in a "brain and body" architecture where your application coordinates with a separate intelligence service through structured API contracts

HOW WE WORK

- Code first, documentation always. We expect every commit to be production-quality and every system to be documented well enough that any new dev can plug in cold.

- Surgical changes. We follow strict scope rules: every change states what's being modified, what must not be touched, and what was verified after. No drive-by refactors.

- Status reports are about what's shipped on the live URL, not what passed locally in your IDE. Screenshots from real user accounts walking real flows.

- Blockers go in writing within 2 hours of hitting them. Not the next day, not when prompted.

- Multi-part instructions get completed in full or you flag the specific part you can't do and why.

- Strong opinions, loosely held. Push back in writing on anything you disagree with, but ship the agreed direction once a call is made.

WHAT THIS IS NOT

- Not a startup-time-but-pay-you-like-an-intern role. Compensation reflects senior US market rates.

- Not a "ship sloppy and iterate" role. We're months from launch with real users and real money involved. Production quality matters.

- Not a "be told exactly what to do" role. We expect senior engineering judgment, architecture proposals, and proactive ownership.

LOGISTICS

- 40 hours per week, contract-to-hire

- US-based with the right to work in the US

- US business hours, with overlap during normal East Coast working hours

- 90-day initial engagement followed by conversion to full-time with equity

- Remote, with occasional optional in-person sessions

We will respond within 48 hours to qualified candidates. First conversation is a 30-minute call with the founder. If there's a fit, a technical conversation follows. Quick process, decisive outcome.