Founding Engineer

Storytime; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare benefits

Equity

In-person office in SoHo

Collaborative environment

Job summary

Storytime is hiring a founding engineer to build the product and engineering function from the ground up in SoHo, NYC. You will work directly with Storytime’s founders, own core features from sketch to production, and shape architecture and engineering culture for a growing team.

This in-person role anchors the platform, with opportunities to prototype AI-powered features, improve creator-brand workflows, and ship impactful modules across web and mobile.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience shipping software used by real users.
• Comfortable working across the web and mobile stack.
• Strong product judgment and ability to turn problems into simple versions.
• Ability to work directly with founders and customers to define direction.

Responsibilities

• Own major product areas end to end: discovery, design, implementation, release and iteration.
• Shape platform architecture and technical direction, balancing speed and durability.
• Work across the stack: web, mobile, backend, APIs, data, infrastructure.
• Collaborate with founders on product strategy, roadmap and priorities.
• Talk with brands, creators, and internal teams to translate problems into software.
• Instrument what you ship and use data to guide next steps.
• Set engineering standards for code quality, testing, deployment and incident response.
• Help hire, onboard and mentor future engineers.
• Fix root causes and not just patches.

Skills

Full-stack generalist

Architectural design

Shipping software

Customer collaboration

Code quality & testing

Job description

Founding Engineer

Location: SoHo, New York City
Employment Type: Full-time, in-person

About Storytime

Storytime is building the platform where local businesses and creators grow together. We connect restaurants, cafés, fitness studios, retailers and other neighborhood brands with authentic local creators. Our technology makes it easy for businesses to launch, manage and measure influencer campaigns while helping creators discover opportunities with places they genuinely love.

We are a fast-growing, early-stage company with a fully custom technology platform and a small team based in SoHo, New York City.

Role Overview

We’re hiring a founding engineer to help build Storytime’s product and engineering function from the ground up.

You’ll work directly with Storytime’s founders on what we build and why, then own the work from first sketch to production. You’ll make architectural decisions that last, write a large share of the code, and set the habits, standards and culture that future engineers will join.

This is a generalist role. In a given month you might ship a feature for brands, rebuild a creator workflow, automate an internal process, prototype an AI-powered feature and track down a production issue. There won’t be a spec waiting for you. You’ll talk to customers and teammates, decide what matters, ship it, and measure whether it worked.

What You’ll Work On

Areas you may own include:

• The core brand experience: signing up, creating campaigns and launching creator collaborations

• Creator discovery, matching, participation and content approval

• Campaign reporting and analytics that show brands what their campaigns achieved

• Internal tools and automation that let our partnerships, community, support and campaign teams do more with less manual work

• Practical AI-powered features, from first prototype to reliable product

• Our iOS app and the mobile experience for creators and brands

• Platform foundations: architecture, data model, performance, reliability, testing and observability

Key Responsibilities

• Own major product areas end to end: discovery, design, implementation, release and iteration

• Shape the platform’s architecture and technical direction, making pragmatic tradeoffs between speed and durability

• Work across the stack: web and mobile interfaces, backend services, APIs, data and infrastructure

• Partner with the founders on product strategy, roadmap and priorities

• Talk directly with brands, creators and internal teams to turn real problems into software

• Instrument what you ship and use data to decide what to build next

• Set engineering standards for code quality, code review, testing, deployment and incident response

• Help hire, onboard and mentor the engineers who join after you

• Fix root causes rather than patching symptoms

Our Technology

We run a fully custom platform. Today it includes TypeScript and React, Node.js, Bun and Go, Swift for iOS, GraphQL and HTTP APIs, and PostgreSQL.

The stack is a means, not a requirement. We care far more about how you think, what you’ve built and how fast you learn than about prior experience with any particular tool, and you’ll help decide where the stack goes next.

Ideal Candidate

You would be a strong fit if you:

• Have built and shipped software that real people use, whether at a startup, a larger company, through freelance work or on your own

• Are a strong generalist who is comfortable anywhere in the stack and quick to learn what you don’t know yet

• Have good product judgment and care about why something should exist, not just how to build it

• Turn ambiguous problems into simple first versions, then improve them based on what you learn

• Hold a high bar for quality while knowing when speed matters more

• Take ownership without being asked and follow work through to completion

• Communicate clearly with technical and nontechnical teammates

• Want to build in person with a small team in our SoHo office

• Are excited about startups, local businesses, social media, marketplaces or the creator economy

A computer science degree is welcome but not required. What you’ve built matters more than where you studied or worked.

Nice to Have

• Experience as an early engineer or founder at a startup

• Shipping both web and iOS products

• Designing data models, APIs or systems that had to grow with a product

• Product analytics, experimentation or growth engineering

• Building with language-model APIs, or heavy use of AI coding tools in your workflow

• Building internal tools, dashboards or workflow automation

• Hiring or mentoring engineers

• Familiarity with influencer marketing, social platforms, restaurants or local commerce

What Success Looks Like

In your first several months, you will:

• Understand how brands, creators and our internal teams use the platform, and where it falls short

• Ship meaningful improvements to production early and often

• Own at least one major product area outright

• Leave the codebase, tooling and engineering practices clearly better than you found them

• Become a trusted partner to the founders on product and technical decisions

• Help shape how we hire and work as the engineering team grows

What We Offer

• A founding role with real ownership of the product, the platform and the engineering culture

• Direct, day-to-day collaboration with Storytime’s founders

• The opportunity to help shape the future of local influencer marketing

• Products used by real businesses and creators, with impact you can see

• Competitive base compensation and equity

• Healthcare benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage

• A collaborative, in-person environment in SoHo

• The opportunity to work with leading creators, restaurants, and consumer brands