Job description
Overview
Job Title: Backend Engineer (Founding Team – MVP & Scale)
Work Arrangement: Remote| 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM EST
Job Type: Full-time
Salary: Competitive base salary in USD
Industry: PropTech / B2B SaaS / Real Estate Technology
Work Schedule: 40 hours per week
About Pearl Talent
Pearl works with the top 1% of candidates from around the world and connects them with the best startups in the US and EU. Our clients have raised over $5B in aggregate and are backed by companies like OpenAI, a16z, and Founders Fund. They’re looking for the sharpest, hungriest candidates who they can consistently promote and work with over many years. Candidates we’ve hired have been flown out to the US and EU to work with their clients, and even promoted to roles that match folks onshore in the US.
Hear why we exist, what we believe in, and who we’re building for: Watch here
🧑💻 Why Work with Us?
We’re not just another recruiting firm—we focus on placing candidates with exceptional US and EU founders who prioritize the long-term success of their team members. We also provide retention bonuses at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, as well as community-driven benefits like an annual retreat.
🏢 About the company
Our partner company are modernizing property maintenance procurement by building a streamlined marketplace that connects multifamily operators with real-time vendor pricing, seamless purchase workflows, and integrations with property management systems. Our mission is to bring consumer-grade simplicity to a $400B+ B2B market.
We’re backed by operators with deep experience in real estate and assembling a lean, world-class team to build the future of procurement.
The Role: Backend Engineer Ruby on Rails (ROR)
We’re looking for a backend engineer who’s comfortable working in pragmatic, developer-friendly frameworks to ship our MVP quickly, while laying the foundation for future scale. You’ll be our first backend hire, collaborating directly with the founder and front-end engineer to bring our platform to life.
What You’ll Do
MVP Phase (First 6–9 Months):
- Build the backend using a pragmatic stack like Ruby on Rails (monolith) or Node.js + TypeScript (serverless or monolith), balancing speed of development and maintainability.
- Develop RESTful APIs and internal services to support core workflows: vendor integration, user auth, PO/Invoice management.
- Connect to third-party vendor APIs (e.g., Home Depot, Ferguson) and build lightweight wrappers for real-time procurement data.
- Handle core business logic around approvals, ROGs, and invoice reconciliation.
- Use platforms like Heroku (or similar) for fast deployments, built-in CI/CD, and observability.
- Prioritize simplicity and reliability over theoretical scale — iterate fast, keep things lean.
- Experience with documenting the code and using patterns like RDoc for Ruby.
Post-MVP Phase (12+ Months):
- Refactor into more scalable services (e.g., modular architecture, serverless/event-driven workflows) as product-market fit emerges.
- Support event-driven integrations, EDI pipelines, and background job orchestration.
- Implement observability best practices (logging, monitoring, alerting).
- Help define engineering standards and make long-term architectural decisions.
Requirements
- 3–6+ years of backend engineering experience, ideally in product-focused environments.
- Strong in at least one of: Ruby on Rails, Node.js, TypeScript.
- Skilled in API design, authentication flows, pagination, and rate limiting.
- Experience integrating with third-party systems (REST, EDI, or webhook-based APIs).
- Pragmatic mindset: can prioritize trade-offs and avoid gold-plating in the MVP phase.
- Comfortable wearing multiple hats, iterating quickly, and owning the backend product decisions.
- Experience in B2B SaaS, marketplaces, real estate tech, or procurement platforms.
💡 Why Join Now
- Be a foundational member of a venture-scale company with real distribution advantages in real estate.
- Own key technical systems from day one, shaping how they evolve.
- Culture built on speed, iteration, and execution.
🤝 What You’ll Get
- Professional Development: Annual learning budget for books, courses, and conferences
- Mentorship: Learn directly from startup veterans (ex-Looker, GitHub, Mulesoft)
- Impact: Help shape a growing brand with a voice that influences fintech innovation
- Inspiring Workspaces: Offices in Berlin, New York, and London, with travel opportunities
- Flat Hierarchy: Work directly with founders and have your ideas heard
- Flexible Work Setup: Equipment of your choice, strong home office support
🚀 Hiring Process
- Application
- Screening
- Top-grading Interview
- Skills Assessment
- Client Interview
- Offer
- Onboarding
