Full-Stack "Discovery Engineer (in-person 5x a week)

Soraban; Chandler (AZ); On-site; USD 85,000 - 115,000; Full time

Job summary

Soraban is seeking a backend engineer in Chandler, Arizona, to enhance their AI-driven tax preparation platform. You will focus on production-level MVPs, ensuring reliability and performance in backend systems while implementing UX improvements for CPA trust.

The role requires strong backend skills, familiarity with AI tools, and the ability to work collaboratively in a fast-paced environment. A passion for building and personal projects is highly valued.

Qualifications

• Strong backend development skills are essential.
• Experience in product and user experience enhancement.
• Familiarity with AI tools in development processes.

Responsibilities

• Ship production-quality MVPs quickly and reliably.
• Ensure document processing is accurate and efficient at scale.
• Lead efforts to stabilize AI outputs through proper testing.
• Build robust backend systems for integration with various software.
• Enhance user experience to earn the trust of CPA clients.

Skills

Backend development

Data modeling

APIs

Reliability engineering

Performance optimization

UI/UX judgment

AI tools proficiency

Ruby on Rails (plus)

React/React Native (plus)

Job description

Why this role exists

Soraban is building the AI that takes the manual work out of tax preparation. Our platform runs the entire workflow for accounting firms — client intake (Collect), data entry into their tax software (Connect), AI-native return prep (Prepare), and delivery with e‑sign and payments (Deliver).

Your job is to take those MVPs to production: fast, and properly. Reliability, tests, scale, and the kind of UX polish that makes a skeptical CPA trust AI. This is the highest-leverage engineering work in the company.

We need more builders who are great at it. This is in-person 5x a week in Chandler, Arizona.

What you’ll actually work on

Not "product features." Real problems, this quarter:

• Production-harden MVPs across our four products against a roadmap that's already scoped — you'll rarely wonder what to build, the bar is how well and how fast.
• Make document pipelines reliable at scale — classification and extraction across W‑2s, the 1099 series, multi-page K‑1 packages, 1098s, 1095‑As — feeding a human‑in‑the‑loop review flow where accuracy is the product.
• Tame AI non‑determinism — the hard, interesting part. Evals, regression tests, confidence/provenance on model outputs, and guardrails so a fallback or a truncated context never quietly ships a wrong return.
• Build backend systems that hold up — messy real‑world PDFs, integrations with UltraTax, Lacerte, Drake, and CCH Axcess, and throughput that scales with the busy season.
• Earn CPA trust through small UX decisions — reviewers approve our AI's work side‑by‑side with the source documents. The interface either makes that fast and trustworthy or it doesn't.

The first 90 days

• Week 1–2: Ship a real fix to production. Get deep on the codebase and the AI pipelines.
• By day 30: Own a slice of one product/project. Take an MVP feature from "works in the demo" to "works for every firm" — tests, edge cases, error states.
• By day 60: Lead the production-hardening of a roadmap feature end‑to‑end, and measurably improve the reliability of one AI extraction or review flow.
• By day 90: Own a product surface, ship meaningful improvements every week, and move a number that matters.

Who thrives here

• Backend strength is non‑negotiable. Data modeling, APIs, reliability, performance. Ruby on Rails is a plus, not a requirement — we care that you can build a solid backend, not which framework you've used.
• Product and UX judgment is non‑negotiable. You feel it when a flow is clunky and you fix it without being asked. React / React Native experience is a plus; UX sense is the actual requirement.
• You're AI-native. You already build with AI tools every day. You know the best practices of AI‑first development — when to let the model draft and when to take the wheel, and you never ship confident‑sounding slop. AI-generated code gets tested and guardrailed, always.
• Low ego, team‑first. You want the team to win. You'll happily spend a day hunting a bug because shipping something solid matters more than your line count. No heroes, no territory.
• Fast and careful at the same time. You move quickly against a clear roadmap and still build it properly. Both, not one.
• You're a builder. You've shipped things — ideally things that weren't assigned to you. Side projects with real users, a product you launched, a startup you started, substantial open‑source work, indie‑hacking revenue. If you build because you can't help it, you'll fit right in.

Bonus points

• You've built tax, accounting, or other financial software.
• You've worked directly with a founder before.
• You've started or shipped your own product — and you can show it.