[Remote] Founding Engineer

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Buckstop is building an intelligence layer for the circular economy that appraises the residual value of electronic assets at scale. The Founding Engineer will help define, build, and scale the technical platform across software, data, and machine learning, owning work end-to-end from design through production and collaborating directly with the CTO and product team.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build — Design purpose-built systems with clear responsibilities. Write production-quality code, participate in design reviews, and hold the bar on what ships
• Own your work end-to-end — From design through deployment and operation. Before something ships, you define what "healthy" looks like and instrument it accordingly. We build it, we run it
• Champion quality — Quality gates exist because our customers make financial decisions on our outputs. Raise the bar over time; challenge a process that slows us down without adding value
• Collaborate and iterate — Work directly with the CTO and product team to understand requirements. Write design documents for consequential decisions; move fast on everything else
• Leverage AI tooling — We use AI aggressively to accelerate engineering work. You are responsible for every line that ships under your name, regardless of how it was generated
• Document constantly — Updating internal documentation is part of the definition of done. If you change how something works, write it down. Amnesia is the default state of a team; documentation is the cure
• Surface issues early — Say something as soon as you know something. Over-communicate. The cost of a cascading failure caused by silence is always higher than the cost of raising a flag early

Skills

• 3–5+ years of professional experience in software engineering, data engineering, or a related technical discipline
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or a relevant language for your track — production-quality code, not just scripts
• Solid SQL fundamentals: complex queries, schema design, and performance intuition
• Experience shipping and operating systems in a cloud environment
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Visa sponsorship (e.g., H-1B) is not available for this role
• Backend API development, async programming, relational database design, containerized deployments, CI/CD pipelines
• ETL/ELT pipeline design, data modeling, data quality frameworks, orchestration tools, event-driven architectures
• Statistical modeling, ML model development and productionization, experimental design, applied analytics that inform real business decisions
• Infrastructure-as-code and security fundamentals (credentials management, access control) are a plus across all tracks
• A strong portfolio or project history carries more weight than a specific degree

Benefits

• Contract-to-hire with a path to leadership and team-building as the company scales.
• Hybrid — Washington D.C./DMV or Seattle preferred. Remote work eligible for the right candidate.
• Early engineers shape architecture, process, and culture.
• Report directly to the CTO. High-impact work with short feedback loops — not a queue of tickets.
• Every line of code advances a sustainable end-of-life for electronic devices at planetary scale.

Company Overview