Founding Software Engineer

Strello Health; Canada; On-site; CAD 85,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity opportunities

Flexible working hours

Office accessible by both Car & TTC

Job summary

A voice technology startup is looking for a Founding Engineer to develop and own the core systems for their voice agent platform. You will work closely with the founding team to create reliable infrastructure for real-time voice interactions. The ideal candidate has experience in backend software engineering, distributed systems, and enjoys early-stage startup dynamics. Willing to offer a salary range of 85k-140k CAD along with equity opportunities and a hybrid work model, with some time in the office.

Qualifications

• 1+ years of experience in backend or platform software engineering, with co-op experience accepted.
• Deep experience with managing bare-metal servers.
• Comfortable making technical decisions with limited information.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement core platform services and API gateways.
• Develop infrastructure for real-time audio streaming.
• Create robust integration layers with LLM providers.
• Own production deployments and manage on-call responsibilities.

Skills

Linux-like systems management

Distributed systems expertise

API development

Real-time systems knowledge

Backend software engineering

Microservices architecture

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Node.js

TypeScript

Python

Job description

The Role

As a Founding Engineer, you'll build and own the core systems that power our voice agent platform. You'll work directly with the founding team to architect reliable, low‑latency infrastructure that handles real‑time voice interactions at scale.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement core platform services (API gateways, voice processing pipelines, LLM orchestration, context engineering frameworks).
• Build infrastructure for real‑time audio streaming and processing with <100ms latency requirements.
• Create robust integration layers with LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc.) and speech services.
• Develop monitoring, observability, and debugging tools for voice conversations.
• Optimize for cost and performance as we scale to thousands of clinics.
• Own production deployments and rotating on‑call responsibilities.
• Make architectural decisions that will shape our technical foundation.
• Be an engineering thought leader within the company in relevant fields.

What We're Looking For

• Deep experience with Linux‑like systems and managing bare‑metal servers.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems and APIs.
• Understanding of real‑time systems or streaming data.
• Excited to learn about LLMs and voice technology.
• 1+ years of experience in backend or platform software engineering (co‑op experience counts). We’re hiring multiple people across a range of experiences, so apply if you have 10+ years of experience or co‑op experience.
• Previous experience building 0 to 1 systems that scaled.
• Deep experience with distributed systems, micro‑services architecture.
• Comfortable making technical decisions with limited information.

Bonus

• Previous work with ML infrastructure or LLM applications is a bonus.
• Experience with real‑time systems (WebRTC, WebSockets) is a major plus.
• Previous contributions to open‑source projects (link them!) is a bonus.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes deployments in production.
• Experience building scaled production Node.js systems is a bonus.

You’ll love it here if you…

• Want high ownership and impact from day one.
• Enjoy the ambiguity and pace of early‑stage startups.
• Care deeply about reliability and user experience.
• Can balance "move fast" with "build it right".
• Want to learn about cutting‑edge LLM‑based voice platforms.
• Are looking for future leadership opportunities within a nascent emerging technology and product domain.
• We work primarily in the Node.js (w/ TypeScript) and Python ecosystems.

Salary Range

• 85k-140k CAD
• 0.25-1% equity

Work Model

• Hybrid – we believe in some facetime (~2 days a week in‑office, remote otherwise)
• We’re looking for folks from the GTA area
• Office accessible by both Car & TTC (Near Kipling station)