Sr. Engineer (Founding Engineer)

RangeWater Residential, LLC; Atlanta (GA); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

RangeWater Residential, LLC in Atlanta, GA seeks a Sr. Engineer (Founding Engineer) to own a production platform — backend services, data stores, and deployments. You’ll build distributed systems, manage databases across SQL/NoSQL, and operate infrastructure with Docker/Kubernetes, CI/CD, and monitoring.

You will ship React UIs end-to-end without a dedicated frontend team. This founding-role emphasizes ownership, quick iteration with AI tooling, and the opportunity to scale a platform used by

Qualifications

• 6+ years building backend or distributed systems.
• End-to-end ownership of a production platform.
• Strong technical judgment with business impact awareness.
• comfortable with on-call responsibilities and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Own the entire platform: backend services, data stores, deployment, and uptime.
• Design and operate distributed systems with REST/gRPC or event-driven pipelines.
• Manage production databases: schema design, migrations, backups (SQL/NoSQL).
• Operate real infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, logs, and monitoring.
• Ship complex UIs in React without designer support.

Skills

Java backend

Spring Boot

Distributed systems

REST APIs

gRPC

Databases

SQL/NoSQL

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Monitoring

On-call

React UI

Tools

Airflow

Kafka

LLMs

Job description

Welcome! Interested in becoming a Ranger?

At RangeWater, we look for people who show up and work together to achieve success and make positive impacts on the lives we touch and enrich the communities we serve, as people are at the heart of everything we do.

As a Ranger, we encourage you to explore possibilities and solutions for your own career success story and apply the same enthusiasm to help RangeWater remain THE leader and powerful force in Multi-Family Real Estate.

Our Team Members play a pivotal role in the success of the company’s performance, and we look forward to witnessing your successful journey as a Ranger!

Culture:

Companies with a strong culture and a higher purpose perform better in the long run.

Core Values (words to live by):

People-focused, Collaboration, Integrity, Service, Results-driven, Experience-centric, and Innovation.

What’s in for you?

Our leaders care about the well-being of all Rangers and recognize the importance of work-life balance. That’s why we offer competitive paid time off and benefits.

PTO/Benefits:

• Two + Weeks of PTO
• Paid Holidays
• Medical, dental and vision insurance
• 401(k) Enrollment Opportunity
• Employer Paid Basic Life and Short-Term Disability
• Paid Parental Leave for Birthing and Non-Birthing Parents (after 6 months)
• Potential opportunity for savings in rent (property and ownership specific)
• Cell Phone Allowance
• And more!

Job Description

Sr. Engineer (Founding Engineer) RangeWater Residential — Atlanta, GA (Hybrid in office/remote)

Who we are

RangeWater Residential is a leader in property management, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Fueled by strong growth and a tech-savvy culture, we've built an in-house platform that streamlines our operations and puts AI tooling in our teams's hands. We run engineering like a startup inside the company: small, fast, and accountable for outcomes rather than tickets.

The role

This is a founding-engineer seat, not a feature-team job. You'll be the engineer behind a production platform the business relies on every month — backend services, data stores, infrastructure, and third-party integrations. There's no platform team behind you: you deploy it, you monitor it, you're on call when it breaks, and you decide what gets built next by sitting with the people who use it. With modern AI tooling, we expect one exceptional engineer to operate at the pace of a small team, and we'll equip you accordingly. Because you'll be the primary owner, you should be genuinely comfortable across distributed, production systems, and comfortable being the last line of defense for a system that holds sensitive business data.

The technical bar

Concretely, you should be able to:

• Own a Java / Spring Boot backend end to end — API design, data modeling, microservices, transactions, performance, and security.
• Design and operate distributed systems — service-to-service APIs (REST/gRPC), event-driven pipelines, and the tradeoffs between them.
• Run production databases yourself: schema design, migrations, query tuning, and backups across SQL and NoSQL.
• Operate real infrastructure: Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, logs, and monitoring — and you've been on the on-call hook when something went down.
• Integrate with messy third-party and partner APIs and make the result reliable at scale.
• Ship polished, complex UIs in React unsupervised — no designer or front-end specialist holding your hand.

Bonus:

data engineering (Airflow, Kafka, or similar) and building with LLMs as a force multiplier.

Who you are

6+ years building backend or distributed systems, including at least one stretch where you shipped something end to end alone or on a very small team — a startup, a founding-engineer role, or a system with real users that was truly yours. Big-tech experience is valuable, but on its own it may not translate: this role has none of that scaffolding. A builder first. You'd rather own the whole problem than a slice of it. Excellent technical judgment — you can weigh a tradeoff, see its business implications, and make the call without a committee. Comfortable owning production end to end — security, data integrity, and uptime are yours, including carrying on-call. Strong stakeholder instincts. You can sit with a non-technical user, understand what they actually need, and ship it quickly. Adaptable and ambitious. As RangeWater grows, you grow into the technical leader who builds the team around this platform. You may be a good fit if you Ship. You've built things start to finish — backend, infra, and the plumbing between them — with no safety net. Have run production on your own — deployed it, monitored it, resolved incidents, and made sure they didn't recur. Like iterating with users. You'd rather sit with the person who has the problem rather guess at it from your desk. Get hooked on hard technical problems. Reverse-engineering a messy integration or hardening a system under real load sounds like a good week. Want to transform businesses with AI. You're driven to figure out how AI can reshape the way a company operates — and you already use it to multiply your own output. Have taste. You know the difference between code that runs and a system that holds up in production. Treat a blank page as a starting line, not a wall.

What you'll own (first year)

• The entire platform: backend services, data stores, deployment, and uptime.
• Hardening it — security, data integrity, tests, and documentation worthy of a system the business depends on.
• Shipping the stakeholder backlog at startup pace.
• Laying the technical foundation — and eventually the team — for what comes next.

Rangewater is an equal opportunity employer.

We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

We develop, acquire, manage, and invest in multifamily and build-to-rent rental communities across the Sun Belt with a singular purpose: to create fulfilling experiences.

#RangeOn