Founding Software Engineer

Restaurants survive on razor‐thin margins. Their two largest expenses, staffing and food, are hidden in manual, error‐prone back‐office tasks that drain GMs’ time:

• Inventory tracking and vendor orders

• Manual invoice reviews and cost audits

• Staff scheduling and labor variance reconciliation

• Disparate spreadsheets and legacy tools

When a vendor quietly raises prices or staffing overshoots demand, operators often don’t know until it’s too late. Kintow’s mission is to automate those back-office workflows, so GMs can focus on leading teams and delighting guests.
We’re already live with top cafes, bakeries, and restaurant groups in the U.S. and are backed by a16z speedrun and Dria Ventures

As our Founding Software Engineer, you’ll own the technical roadmap from data pipelines to AI‐powered features. You care deeply about crafting clean, reliable systems and intuitive, AI‐first experiences for non‐technical users. You’ll work closely with Ivan and Avi to turn restaurant pain points into scalable solutions—building integrations, automating workflows, and setting engineering standards from day one.

• Design and build AI‐first interfaces and APIs that surface cost anomalies, automate reorder recommendations, and drive dynamic schedule adjustments

• Architect and maintain scalable ETL pipelines to ingest invoices, POS data, and labor metrics; build data models that power machine‐learning features

• Ship autonomous B2B workflows, auto‐generate POs, sync vendor feeds, and trigger schedule optimizations with minimal intervention

• Define and uphold engineering best practices: establish code standards, CI/CD pipelines, deployment strategies, and mentor future hires

• 5+ years of experience at a fast‐paced, venture‐backed startup

• Full‐stack proficiency: Next.js, Prisma, PostgreSQL, Python, AWS—comfortable prototyping front‐end features and optimizing back‐end data flows

• AI‐driven mindset: Experience building ML‐enabled applications; familiarity with OpenAI API, Prophet, or similar libraries is a plus

• Product sensibility: You obsess over UX and performance so automated workflows feel seamless to end users

• Ownership mentality: You thrive under ambiguity, wear multiple hats, and ship high‐impact features on tight timelines

• Long‐term equity upside: You want genuine ownership over your work and our engineering culture

• Founding-level impact: Your code and architectural decisions directly shape our product’s reliability and scalability—there’s no red tape, just clear ownership.

• Design-first philosophy: We believe every feature should start with user needs. Engineers and designers partner from day one: Iterating prototypes, aligning on goals, and ensuring the final product solves real problems.

• Respect for your personal time: We set high standards but trust you to manage your schedule

• Transparent, candid culture: Open feedback loops, and quarterly offsites ensure we solve hard problems face-to-face.

• Equity & ownership: You’ll have real stake in our success and the chance to define engineering practices, tooling, and culture from day one.