Founding Engineer — Early-Stage AI SaaS Startup

Vendilabs; Fatih; On-site; TRY 600,000 - 1,000,000; Full time

Job summary

VendiLabs is an early-stage AI-first SaaS company seeking a hands-on Founding Engineer to help build products from 0→1 and shape the technical foundation from the start.

You'll write production code, work closely with the Founder and engineering team, and influence architecture, product and technical decisions in an early-stage environment.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals.
• Solid experience with backend development, APIs and relational databases.
• Ability to work across the full stack.
• Experience shipping real products to real users.
• Understanding of authentication, security, caching and asynchronous systems.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship AI-first SaaS products from 0→1.
• Develop backend services, APIs, databases and core product infrastructure.
• Work across frontend and mobile when needed.
• Build systems around authentication, billing, subscriptions and multi-tenancy.
• Integrate AI/LLM capabilities into production products.
• Contribute to architecture, deployment, CI/CD, observability and reliability.
• Turn product requirements and user feedback into working software.
• Help establish engineering standards and reusable foundations as the company grows.

Skills

Backend

APIs

Databases

Cloud

Production code

OpenAI/AI systems

Tools

Relational databases

Job description

VendiLabs is an early-stage AI-first SaaS company building products for global markets.

We’re forming a small, high-ownership core team around engineering, AI and product. We’re looking for a hands-on Founding Engineer who wants to help build products from 0→1 and shape the technical foundation of the company from the beginning.

This is not a narrowly scoped frontend or backend role. You’ll write production code, work closely with the Founder and the rest of the engineering team, and have meaningful input into architecture, product and technical decisions.

What you’ll do

• Build and ship AI-first SaaS products from 0→1
• Develop backend services, APIs, databases and core product infrastructure
• Work across frontend and mobile when needed
• Build systems around authentication, billing, subscriptions and multi-tenancy
• Integrate AI/LLM capabilities into production products
• Contribute to architecture, deployment, CI/CD, observability and reliability
• Make pragmatic trade-offs between speed, scalability and maintainability
• Turn product requirements and user feedback into working software
• Help establish engineering standards and reusable foundations as the company grows

What we’re looking for

• Strong software engineering fundamentals
• Solid experience with backend development, APIs and relational databases
• Ability to work comfortably across the stack
• Experience shipping real products to real users
• Understanding of authentication, security, caching and asynchronous systems
• Experience with cloud environments and production deployments
• Strong product thinking and ownership
• Comfortable operating in an early-stage environment with ambiguity and changing priorities
• Strong English for technical communication and documentation

Experience with OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, RAG, embeddings, agents or other production AI systems is a strong plus.

Strong advantages

• Built your own SaaS, mobile app or side project
• Shipped a product from idea to production
• Worked in an early-stage startup or founding engineering team
• Experience with subscription-based SaaS or consumer products
• Public GitHub, portfolio or live products you can show

We’re building a small core team in Istanbul where engineers are expected to stay close to both the product and the code.

Long-term role growth and equity may be considered for the right person.