https://www.avalon.tax/careers/senior-software-engineer-chatham-nj

Avalon Tax is a shipped product with real customers and revenue. We are hiring a senior software engineer to own the health of that product: keep it fast, reliable, and secure as our customer base grows, and ship new features alongside our Senior Tax Product Specialist, who defines what a correct tax result looks like while you make the software deliver it.

You will be the most experienced engineer on the team, but not the only person in the code. The founder, the tax product specialist, and AI coding agents all work in the repository daily. Part of your job is keeping quality high across all of it: reviewing changes whether a person or an agent wrote them, strengthening tests and CI, and improving the tooling the whole team relies on.

How we work matters as much as what we build. AI coding tools are load-bearing in our development process; we use them to move at a speed a team our size could not otherwise reach, with review and verification practices to match. We have learned firsthand that engineers who prefer to work without these tools slow the whole team down. You should be someone who already gets real leverage from AI agents every day, reviews their output critically rather than accepting it on faith, and enjoys making the tools themselves work better.

What You’ll Do

Own the reliability, performance, and security of the product across the full stack: an Electron + React (TypeScript) desktop app, a Python FastAPI document extraction backend, and a Node.js/Express + PostgreSQL cloud backend.

Scale the platform as we add customers: throughput and resilience of the document extraction pipeline, observability, error handling, and cost control of third-party AI services.

Keep taxpayer data safe: local-first architecture, privacy-preserving telemetry, authentication, secrets handling, dependency hygiene, and secure defaults everywhere.

Partner with the Senior Tax Product Specialist to turn tax requirements into shipped features, from document extraction through automated data entry into ProConnect, Drake, Lacerte, and CCH Axcess Tax.

Troubleshoot customer-reported issues end-to-end across desktop and cloud, fix root causes rather than symptoms, and turn every fix into a regression test.

Review and integrate code from humans and AI agents alike; raise the bar on testing, CI, and release quality.

Improve our AI-assisted development infrastructure (e.g agent workflows, validation hooks, review tooling) so the entire team ships faster and safer.

Own our third-party integrations across AI and document-intelligence services, billing, identity, and CRM tooling.

Self-driven problem solver who enjoys a challenge and is naturally curious how we can use AI to improve the working lives of our customers

7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including end-to-end ownership of production systems that real customers depend on.

Strong in at least two of our core technologies (Python, TypeScript/React, Node.js) and able to work effectively across all of them. Experience with relational databases (we use PostgreSQL) and REST APIs.

Demonstrated AI-native development: AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or comparable) are already part of how you work daily; you direct them with the right context and constraints, inspect and test what they produce, and iterate to a verified result. Be prepared to show real examples.

A security mindset: we handle sensitive taxpayer information, and you treat that as a design constraint, not an afterthought.

Strong debugging instincts across unfamiliar territory: desktop, cloud, third-party APIs, and Windows-specific behavior.

Self-directed and pragmatic: comfortable owning ambiguous problems on a small team, communicating clearly with technical and non-technical colleagues, and collaborating with contributors who are not traditional software engineers.

Ability to work full-time in-person in our Northern New Jersey office with potential for 1 day/week remote working at the discretion of the Founder/CEO, Nice to have: Electron or desktop application experience; Windows desktop automation; document extraction, OCR, or LLM pipeline experience; tax, accounting, or fintech domain exposure; prior early-stage startup experience., * Bachelor’s (Required)

Experience:

• Software development: 4 years (Required)

Language:

• English (Required)

Base salary: $100,000-$175,000, based on experience, breadth across our stack, production ownership track record, and demonstrated AI-native development.

Equity: 0.75%-1.25% of the company in stock options, with a standard four-year vesting schedule and one-year cliff. Where you land in the range depends on experience, credentials, and salary placement, and we are open to trading some salary for additional equity if you prefer more upside.

Benefits: You will be one of our first employees, joining before we have a formal corporate benefits program. Today that means 15 days of paid time off, paid holidays, and earned sick leave as provided by New Jersey law.

As the team and the business grow, we intend to add a full benefits package, including health coverage and retirement. The trade is real: early-stage breadth, outsized influence on the product, and ground-floor standing at a growing company with a proven product, real customers and revenue, in exchange for big company benefits arriving over time rather than on day one.

Avalon Tax is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law. Reasonable accommodations are available during the application and interview process.

Pay: $100,000.00 - $175,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Free parking
• Paid holidays
• Paid sick time
• Paid time off