Founding Full-Stack Engineer — Remote & High Ownership

Smart Working; Islamabad; On-site; PKR 33,324,000 - 49,986,000; Full time

Job summary

Smart Working seeks a Founding Engineer to own the platform end‑to‑end across frontend, backend and infrastructure. You’ll scale the AI‑native PSA, deliver customer‑facing features, and operate as the first in‑house engineering hire with high autonomy.

This senior/staff IC role emphasizes ownership, flexibility, and growth as the company scales, with a remote‑first, full‑time mindset and future hiring opportunities as funding closes.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with end-to-end ownership.
• 5+ years senior full-stack experience across React/TypeScript frontend and Node/Postgres backend.
• 4+ years solo ownership of cloud deployment, releases and CI/CD.
• 3+ years with Postgres/Supabase or equivalent and relational databases.
• 1–2+ years using AI-assisted coding tools in production software.
• A clear method for checking AI output and operating as a senior/staff IC.

Responsibilities

• Own the product end-to-end as a solo generalist across frontend, backend and infra.
• Keep the live platform healthy with incidents, defects and safe releases.
• Use AI tools while verifying correctness, security and robustness.
• Lead ISO 27001/SOC 2 readiness with concrete engineering controls.
• Improve or replace components based on customer risk and value.
• Move fluidly across frontend and backend as a true full-stack generalist.
• Ship customer-facing improvements and enable a future supporting engineer.

Skills

React/TypeScript

Node.js

PostgreSQL

CI/CD

Cloud deployment

AI-assisted coding

Full-stack ownership

Solo/independent work

Tools

Cursor

Claude Code

Copilot

Job description

At Smart Working, we believe your job should not only look right on paper but also feel right every day. This isn’t just another remote opportunity - it’s about finding where you truly belong, no matter where you are. From day one, you’re welcomed into a genuine community that values your growth and well-being.

Our mission is simple: to break down geographic barriers and connect skilled professionals with outstanding global teams and products for full-time, long-term roles. We help you discover meaningful work with teams that invest in your success, where you’re empowered to grow personally and professionally.

Join one of the highest-rated workplaces on Glassdoor and experience what it means to thrive in a truly remote-first world.

About the Role

As a Founding Engineer, you’ll be the first in-house engineering hire, owning the platform across frontend, backend and infrastructure. You’ll scale and evolve the existing AI-native Professional Services Automation platform while continuing to deliver customer-facing features.

This is a senior/staff-level IC role with significant ownership and autonomy, with scope to grow as the company scales.

About Smart Working

At Smart Working, we believe your job should not only look right on paper but also feel right every day. This isn’t just another remote opportunity - it’s about finding where you truly belong, no matter where you are. From day one, you’re welcomed into a genuine community that values your growth and well-being.

Our mission is simple: to break down geographic barriers and connect skilled professionals with outstanding global teams and products for full-time, long-term roles. We help you discover meaningful work with teams that invest in your success, where you’re empowered to grow personally and professionally.

Join one of the highest-rated workplaces on Glassdoor and experience what it means to thrive in a truly remote-first world.

About the Role

As a Founding Engineer, you’ll be the first in-house engineering hire, owning the platform across frontend, backend and infrastructure. You’ll scale and evolve the existing AI-native Professional Services Automation platform while continuing to deliver customer-facing features.

This is a senior/staff-level IC role with significant ownership and autonomy, with scope to grow as the company scales.

Responsibilities

• Own the product end-to-end as a solo generalist, building, shipping and deploying across frontend, backend and infrastructure without a supporting team.


• Keep the live platform healthy, including handling incidents and defects and managing safe releases and rollback.


• Use AI/agentic coding tools to increase personal output while independently verifying correctness, security and robustness rather than trusting AI-generated output blindly.


• Lead the platform towards ISO 27001 and SOC 2 readiness by April 2027, translating external compliance requirements into concrete engineering controls; prior certification experience is not required.


• Make the AI assistant and orchestration features reliable, measurable and safe.


• Decide what to preserve, isolate, improve or replace in the current platform based on customer risk and commercial value, without undertaking an unnecessary rebuild.


• Move fluidly across frontend and backend as a true full-stack generalist, with no fixed frontend/backend split.


• Harden, scale and evolve the existing product, including delivery intelligence, AI assistant, SOW ingestion, project/resource/commercial management and a beta orchestration layer, while continuing to ship customer-facing improvements.


• Work solo end-to-end as the company's hands-on technical owner, with the potential to help decide on and shape the first supporting engineering hire once funding closes.


• Work effectively with high ambiguity, evolving scope and close, direct collaboration with both technical and non-technical founders.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally including early-stage startup or high-ownership experience.


• 5+ years of senior-level full-stack engineering experience across a React/TypeScript frontend and Node/Postgres-style backend, or a strong modern JavaScript/TypeScript full-stack equivalent such as Next.js or Vue/Nuxt, with proven end-to-end ownership.


• 4+ years of senior-level experience with solo ownership of cloud deployment, releases and CI/CD, or a proven record of shipping and operating production infrastructure without a dedicated DevOps/platform team.


• 3+ years of senior-level experience with Postgres/Supabase or equivalent, including row-level security and edge functions. Deep relational database experience with another Postgres-based backend, Firebase or PlanetScale is also acceptable.


• 1–2+ years of senior-level experience using AI-assisted/agentic coding tools such as Cursor, Claude Code or Copilot to ship production software, or demonstrable heavy and disciplined use of LLMs within a professional development workflow.


• Have a clear method for checking AI-generated output rather than trusting it blindly.


• Be comfortable operating as a senior/staff-level individual contributor generalist and owning a product or platform end-to-end solo or near-solo; formal project-leadership titles are not required.

Nice to Have

• 1–2+ years of LLM application engineering experience covering prompt design, evaluation, grounding and orchestration/agent safety, or evidence of fast, rigorous learning in a new technical domain.


• 2+ years of security fundamentals covering multi-tenant access control, secrets management and authentication/OAuth, or a security-conscious engineering track record without a formal security title.


• Experience translating ISO 27001/SOC 2 requirements into engineering practice. No prior certification experience is required, but you must be able to research and implement compliance requirements independently ahead of the April 2027 target.


• 2+ years of startup/founding engineer or small-team, high-ownership experience, or a track record of shipping solo or near-solo end-to-end without a supporting team.


• 1+ year of rapid-prototype/AI-generated codebase remediation experience, such as with Lovable, v0 or Bolt-originated codebases, or experience stabilising and hardening fast-built code of any origin.


• 1+ year of Stripe billing/payments API integration experience, or experience with another payments or metering API integration.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.