Founding Engineer

In this high-impact role, the Founding Engineer will take meaningful ownership of the technical direction and product delivery. Working hands-on across a TypeScript and JavaScript stack, the successful candidate will make foundational architecture decisions, establish engineering best practices, and ship production systems alongside the company’s founders., Core System Architecture: Design, build, and operate core backend and full-stack systems using TypeScript and JavaScript. Product Execution: Take products from initial concept through architecture, implementation, and deployment into production. Infrastructure Integrations: Build secure integrations with financial, banking, payments, and crypto infrastructure. Data Security & Reliability: Develop and maintain systems that handle sensitive financial data, ledgers, and business-critical transactions. Engineering Standards: Establish software engineering standards, quality assurance, and best practices across the codebase. Strategic Collaboration: Work directly with company leadership to translate commercial and customer requirements into technical roadmaps and product features. Team & Roadmap Leadership: Help shape the long-term technical architecture and contribute to building the wider engineering team as the business scales.

• Experience: At least 5 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Tech Stack: Strong, recent experience building and operating production systems with TypeScript and JavaScript.
• Domain Expertise: Meaningful hands-on experience working within both fintech and crypto environments.
• Startup Background: Proven experience in venture-backed companies (Seed to Series C), with a clear understanding of how engineering priorities shift during high-growth phases.
• Engineering Fundamentals: Strong backend or full-stack engineering fundamentals, including API design, external integrations, and data modeling.
• Ownership & Agency: A track record of owning complex technical products end-to-end, with high autonomy and comfort operating in low-process, fast-paced environments.
• Security Mindset: Sound judgment regarding security, reliability, data integrity, and compliance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with credit, lending, payments, banking, or treasury infrastructure.
• Background in financial ledgers, reconciliation, or transaction-processing systems.
• Familiarity with stablecoins, wallets, custody, on-chain payments, or blockchain infrastructure.
• Exposure to risk, underwriting, fraud detection, identity, or compliance systems.
• Previous experience helping build an engineering function, or hiring, mentoring, and leading engineers from an early startup stage.

Competitive base salary with early-stage equity options. Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance coverage. Opportunities for rapid professional growth and technical leadership. Collaborative workspace in New York City with flexible work arrangements. Generous paid time off (PTO) and company holidays. Due to the high volume of applications we anticipate, we regret that we are unable to provide individual feedback to all candidates. If you do not hear back from us within 4 weeks of your application, please assume that you have not been successful on this occasion. We genuinely appreciate your interest and wish you the best in your job search. Commitment to Equality and Accessibility: At MLabs, we are committed to offer equal opportunities to all candidates. We ensure no discrimination, accessible job adverts, and providing information in accessible formats. Our goal is to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace with equal opportunities for all. If you need any reasonable adjustments during any part of the hiring process or you would like to see the job-advert in an accessible format please let us know at the earliest opportunity by emailing human-resources@mlabs.city.