DF - Founding Fullstack Engineer (Back End Oriented)

About Empirical

Empirical empowers early and growth stage tech companies to create the right products in the right way by providing two pivotal services:

• Product & Technology Leadership: Our clients entrust critical decisions to our network of top-tier US-based CTOs and CPOs. We provide fractional, project, or advisory based support, combining highly experienced talent with a flexible approach.

• Product Development Teams: We provide our clients with high performing, senior product development talent through a scalable staff augmentation model and ongoing support. We focus on Latin America to find exceptional talent, with time zone and cultural compatibility.

We are proud to be a people first company, where we prioritize building meaningful, long lasting human connections with clients and team members alike, while embracing diversity and uniqueness. With this foundation and our focus on talent, we help create great products that people love.

Our values

• Care about people first

• Strive to add value always

• Lead with integrity

• Have fun every step of the way

The opportunity

DF is a mission-driven startup improving surgical outcomes by making sure life-saving medical devices arrive where and when they’re needed. The company is in an early stage, freshly funded with guaranteed two years of runway, already live with its first customers.

Founded by seasoned executives with deep roots in the healthcare technology industry, DF’s leadership brings strong domain credibility and a clear understanding of market needs. They identified a sector hungry for this solution and are now focused on scaling it with a product-first, engineering-driven approach. The current team includes a CTO and a VP of Engineering, each with over 15 years of experience building and leading high-performing software teams. You'll work along another fullstack founding engineer, focused on the front-edn side of the stack.

This is a founding engineer role for someone hands-on, pragmatic, and eager to help define and implement the product roadmap. Working closely with the founding team, you’ll shape the product, architecture, and early engineering culture, turning complex workflows into simple, usable interfaces and building functional products fast while staying connected to real users. You’re comfortable with ambiguity, driven by solving real customer problems, and motivated to build something meaningful from the ground up, with the chance to grow into a leadership role as the team expands.

What you’ll do

• Design and build core backend systems, APIs, and customer integrations

• Work directly with founders and your frontend counterpart to define and implement the roadmap

• Lead technical onboarding and integration efforts with early customers

• Contribute to architecture, infrastructure, and product direction as the platform scales

• Take ownership of delivery at a sustainable pace, prioritizing outcomes, reliability, and autonomy

• Help lay the groundwork for DF’s future engineering organization and your own growth into technical leadership

Your Background

You’ll excel in this role if you love building scalable systems from the ground up and thrive on translating product needs into solid, maintainable architecture.

Core Skills

• 5+ years building and scaling backend or platform systems for modern web applications

• Strong proficiency with Node.js and TypeScript

• Solid understanding of relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred)

• Proven experience designing and maintaining RESTful APIs (GraphQL familiarity a plus)

• Experience integrating systems and building customer-facing workflows

• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or similar)

• Excellent English communication skills; essential for a fully remote, distributed team

Strong Pluses

• Experience with Drizzle ORM (or alternatives like Prisma, Sequelize, TypeORM)

• Exposure to cloud orchestration and monitoring (EC2, IAM, RDS, S3, SQS, SNS; bonus: Lambda, Step Functions, DynamoDB)

• Good understanding of architecture and scalability best practices

• Product-oriented mindset: pragmatic, outcome-driven, and comfortable working directly with customers and founders

• Startup-experienced: self-sufficient, adaptable, and eager to help define engineering culture

Bonus Points

• Familiarity with observability or automation tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Zapier)

• Experience using AI-assisted development tools (Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code)

• Excitement for long-term ownership and growth into future technical leadership

What we expect from you

• 100% alignment with our core values!

• Ability to take ownership of projects from start to finish

• Strong collaboration and communication skills

• Attention to detail and a passion for creating great user experiences

What we offer

• Remote/flexible work

• Highly competitive compensation in US dollars

• Opportunities for personal and professional development; mentorship, coaching and training as needed

• Ongoing, 40 hours per week dedication

• The chance to be part of an amazing, multicultural community of tech experts

Why work with us?

• We pride ourselves on our core values and have proven that putting people first creates a thriving and collaborative work environment.

• We seek to accommodate and balance individual needs with client needs, understanding each one of us is unique.

• We offer benefits such as remote/flexible work, selective paid training, mentorship programs, referral programs and more.

• We are selective in the projects we take on to ensure our teams are engaged in challenging, meaningful, enjoyable opportunities that will provoke creativity, innovation and growth!