Kinect — Backend Engineer

# Kinect — Backend Engineer **Type:** Full-time | On-site | San Francisco, CA **Compensation:** $120,000–$150,000 + Competitive equity **Hiring count:** 1 **Visa sponsorship:** None available **Reports to:** Co-founder (two-person engineering team) ## About Kinect Kinect is building an AI revenue platform for D2C brands with a heavy e-commerce focus, integrating with major platforms including Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and Adobe Commerce. It helps mid-market and enterprise D2C brands build AI automations and tooling that drive more sales on- and off-platform, and runs its own internal analytics platform to track feature usage and performance. Three months old, YC-backed, already at $250K ARR and working with brands representing over $50M in GMV. Runway is comfortable for at least 18 months, and the founders project 8x growth to $2–5M ARR by year-end. Founded and run by two technical co-founders who still code daily. Founded: 2026 (3 months old at posting) | Team size: 1–10 (two-person engineering team) | Total funding: Not disclosed (YC-backed) Industry: eCommerce, D2C, AI Website: https://trykinect.ai Office: San Francisco, CA ## Why Candidates Should Join - **Ground-floor ownership:** Platform infrastructure, feature engineering, workflows, and observability tooling don't exist yet — you build them from scratch. - **Real traction, early:** YC-backed, $250K ARR at three months, brands worth $50M+ in GMV, 18+ months runway, and a projected 8x to $2–5M ARR by year-end. - **AI-native by default:** The founders barely read code by hand; heavy AI-tool development is the expected way of working, not a novelty. - **Direct to the founders:** Two technical co-founders who still code daily — you report straight to one on a two-person engineering team. ## Intake Call Summary - AI-native coding fluency is explicitly the #1 priority — the founders barely read code manually and expect heavy AI-tool development from day one. - Past MVP with live customers; now building platform-level infrastructure, feature engineering, workflows, and observability from scratch (none currently exists). - Stack (TypeScript on Fly.io) was chosen recently as the founders build past their comfort zone — adaptability matters more than deep stack-specific experience. - Two-person engineering team; role reports to a co-founder. - Some forward-deployed, customer-facing work is a plus — translating direct customer feedback (sometimes just a meeting summary) into shipped features. - Creative comp structures considered, including revenue-target bonuses. ## The Role Backend Engineer with a data-engineering lean, building the data enrichment, normalization, and ingestion pipelines that power the platform, plus the platform infrastructure and tooling that doesn't yet exist. ### What You'll Be Doing - Build and maintain data enrichment, normalization, and ingestion pipelines - Build feature engineering and platform infrastructure, including observability and workflow tooling that doesn't yet exist - Work extensively with AI coding tools as a core part of daily development, not an occasional aid - Translate customer feedback and requirements directly into shipped features, sometimes working from a meeting summary rather than a formal spec - Contribute independently to systems and data-layer design decisions **Tech stack:** TypeScript on Fly.io (recently adopted; adaptability valued over deep stack-specific experience) ## Requirements - Strong proficiency in using AI coding tools as a primary part of the development workflow (top priority) - Solid systems engineering fundamentals: understands how features work end-to-end and how to build data layers - Demonstrated startup experience with genuine ownership of what was built - Comfortable with high-intensity pace: 5-6 days a week - Experience: 0–2 years ## Green Flags - Fluent, heavy use of AI coding tools as a core part of daily development - Genuine startup ownership: built and was responsible for real systems, no…