Lead Full-Stack Engineer

Vintti; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity & CTO path

USD salary

Direct impact on architecture

Founders collaboration

Job summary

Vintti is seeking a Lead Full-Stack Engineer to own the technical foundation of an AI-powered travel platform. You will architect the system, write substantial code, and make critical architectural decisions alongside the founders.

This hands-on leadership role focuses on building a reliable transactional platform with real bookings and payments, while laying the groundwork for an eventual CTO-level leadership track as the team scales.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience across frontend and backend.
• Proven track record of building and launching products from scratch with ownership of architecture.
• Experience with transactional systems (payments, bookings) and idempotency.
• Experience integrating real-time pricing/inventory via third-party APIs.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical development: architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring.
• Build responsive frontend and backend services behind them.
• Design modular architecture for multiple experiences sharing one backend.
• Build orchestration engine for multi-component trips (search, book, pay).
• Design AI agents with safe tool calls and explicit user approvals.
• Integrate travel suppliers and payment providers (Stripe, etc.).
• Ensure reliable transaction flows with retries and refunds handling.
• Lay groundwork for multi-tenant business accounts and partner branding.

Skills

TypeScript

React / Next.js

Node.js

Python

AI-powered features in production

System design

Security & privacy

Tools

PostgreSQL

Job description

Lead Full-Stack Engineer – AI-Powered Travel Platform

About the Opportunity

We are partnering with an early-stage, founder-led company building an AI-powered travel platform for both travelers and businesses.

The platform brings flights, hotels, car rentals, villas, yachts, dining and more into a single itinerary with one checkout. Users plan and book through conversational AI, and the system remembers their preferences across every channel they use.

Beyond consumers, the platform serves business travel teams, concierges, travel advisors, and partners such as fintechs and membership communities that offer travel to their own customers, often under their own brand.

The company already operates a travel agency, has a working demo and product specifications, and is now building its first production MVP.

The Role

You will be the company's first engineering hire. Today the team is the two founders (including the Head of Product) and a technical advisor, so you will own the technical foundation from day one.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will define the architecture, write a large part of the code yourself, and make independent technical decisions, while working closely with the founders on product priorities, costs and customer value.

The core challenge is not building an impressive AI demo. It is building reliable transactional software, where real bookings and real payments must never be lost, duplicated or falsely confirmed, with AI orchestration on top.

As the company grows, you will help build the engineering team, with a clear path to a CTO-level position.

What You’ll Focus on First

In your first months, the goal is a working MVP ready for market and investor conversations in early 2027. That means:

• Defining the core architecture, data model and service boundaries that the rest of the platform will grow on.
• Building one complete booking flow end to end in a responsive web app (desktop and mobile): conversational request, search, comparison, itinerary, traveler approval, payment and confirmation.
• Integrating the first real supplier and payment APIs, including failure handling such as expired quotes, timeouts and declined payments.
• Being honest about production gaps and turning them into a realistic roadmap.
• Multi-channel distribution (messaging apps, embedded partner experiences, APIs and MCP integrations) and the B2B workspace come next, on top of that foundation.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end technical development of the platform: architecture, implementation, testing, deployment and monitoring.
• Build responsive frontend experiences and the backend services, APIs and database structures behind them.
• Design a modular architecture where several customer experiences (consumer app, business workspace, partner integrations) share one backend.
• Build the orchestration engine that searches, compares, assembles, books, charges and services multi-component trips.
• Design AI agents that take real actions safely: constrained tool calls, deterministic transaction logic, and explicit user approval before any booking or payment.
• Integrate third-party travel suppliers (GDS and booking APIs such as Duffel) and payment providers (such as Stripe, plus crypto payments).
• Build reliable transaction flows: revalidating prices before booking, verifying booking state before retrying, preventing duplicate charges, and handling changes, cancellations and refunds.
• Build consent-based traveler memory (profiles, preferences, history) with strong privacy controls and clear edit and delete paths.
• Lay the groundwork for multi-tenant business accounts: tenant isolation, roles and permissions, approval workflows and partner branding.
• Work closely with the UX/UI Designer and the founders to turn product specifications into working software.
• Set engineering standards and help hire and lead the engineering team as it grows.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, working across both frontend and backend.
• Proven track record of building and launching products from scratch (0 to 1), with clear personal ownership of architecture and production decisions.
• Production experience with transactional systems where reliability is critical: payments, checkout, bookings or order management, including retries, idempotency, reconciliation and failure recovery.
• Experience integrating third-party APIs where pricing, inventory or status change in real time (webhooks, rate limits, timeouts, uncertain external state).
• Strong system design skills and solid database fundamentals; PostgreSQL experience is a strong plus.
• Hands-on experience with technologies such as TypeScript, React / Next.js, Node.js or Python.
• Experience building AI-powered features in production: LLM integrations, tool calling, conversational AI or AI agents.
• Secure handling of user and payment data: authentication, authorization and privacy.
• Advanced English and the ability to work directly with US-based founders and stakeholders.

Nice to Have

• Experience in travel tech, online travel agencies, booking platforms, marketplaces or fintech.
• Experience with B2B SaaS, multi-tenant platforms, or white-label and embedded products.
• Familiarity with GDS or travel supply APIs, and with payment providers such as Stripe.
• Experience with agentic orchestration frameworks or MCP.
• Previous experience as an early engineer or technical lead at a startup.

What We’re Looking For

• A builder with a founder mindset who takes ownership without waiting for detailed instructions.
• A systems thinker who sees the whole product, not just individual features.
• Someone who can prioritize a narrow launch path instead of trying to build everything at once.
• A creative problem-solver who respectfully challenges assumptions and explains tradeoffs clearly.
• An engineer with strong fundamentals who uses AI coding tools as an accelerator, not a substitute for understanding.
• Someone comfortable with ambiguity, imperfect specifications and a fast-moving early-stage environment.

What We Offer

• A founding-team role with equity and a path to CTO.
• Competitive compensation in USD.
• Direct impact on the architecture and direction of the product from day one.
• Work directly with the founders in a fast-growing space.

Location:

Remote from Latin America

Schedule:

Full-time, aligned with Central Time