What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Software Engineer position at OuterSignal?
About OuterSignal
We are building the customer intelligence layer for commerce. Brands know when an order comes in, but they only see ~5% of the real story. We show them the other 95%: not just who bought, but who that person is - the execs, influencers, journalists, retail buyers, investors, and everyday customers who become a brand’s best evangelists. Our platform enriches every order in real time with professional personal signals, unlocks personas, and powers everything from surprise-and-delight outreach to smarter email flows, analytics, and BD leads. We serve 150 brands and are growing 50% month-over-month - all within our first 6 months of operation. We're a small, high-performing team building the category-defining platform for e-commerce customer intelligence, backed by a world-class investor base.
What You’ll Do:
We are building the customer intelligence layer for commerce. Brands know when an order comes in, but they only see ~5% of the real story. We show them the other 95%: not just who bought, but who that person is - the execs, influencers, journalists, retail buyers, investors, and everyday customers who become a brand’s best evangelists. Our platform enriches every order in real time with professional personal signals, unlocks personas, and powers everything from surprise-and-delight outreach to smarter email flows, analytics, and BD leads. We serve 150 brands and are growing 50% month-over-month - all within our first 6 months of operation. We're a small, high-performing team building the category-defining platform for e-commerce customer intelligence, backed by a world-class investor base.
What You’ll Do:
- Architect and own core systems that process millions of orders across APIs and LLM pipelines
- Build queue-based microservices using Redis, Node.js, Typescript, Postgres, Docker/K8s, Vercel
- Integrate vector databases RAG pipelines to make customer profiles smarter, faster, and searchable in real time
- Ship features end-to-end: APIs, dashboards, integrations (Shopify, Klaviyo, Slack, Zapier, Gorgias)
- Keep us ahead on privacy & compliance
- Work directly with Founding Team on roadmap, product direction, and hiring future engineers
- 5 years engineering experience, ideally with backend infra distributed systems
- Experience in a fast-paced startup or willingness to dive in to a dynamic, changing environment
- Fluent in JS/TS (Node), with some Python/ML exposure a plus
- Experience with vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, etc.) and RAG architectures
- Comfortable designing schemas scaling Postgres
- Bonus if you’ve built around LLMs, Shopify apps, or data-privacy frameworks
- Most importantly: you want ownership. You like to build quickly, solve “figure-it-out” problems, and aren’t afraid of messy early-stage work.
- Early seat: This is shaping the DNA of OuterSignal’s engineering org.
- Massive upside: Meaningful equity in a venture-backed company defining a new SaaS category
- High leverage work: You’ll see your code directly impact customers, revenue, and growth
- Big surface area: From AI pipelines to Shopify apps to RAG/vector search infra, you’ll touch it all
- Right moment: We’re past prototype, real brands already rely on us and have PMF, but the ceiling is wide open