Matchii is the new way to hire agencies: matched, not browsed. Hiring an agency today is a slog: 20+ quotes, 40+ hours of vetting, and a gut-feel pick that's wrong about half the time. Matchii makes it feel like booking the perfect flight; describe what you need, the right team appears, work begins. Human, AI-native, or hybrid. We match. We back the outcome. Behind the scenes, it's two products on one platform: a matched marketplace for the people doing the hiring and an operating system that the agencies run their whole business on. Underneath both is a data layer, the largest dataset of real services pricing and outcomes anywhere, that makes every match smarter than the last. The timing is the whole point. The $500B+ global agency services market is old and broken, and AI just blew the supply side open: 100+ AI-native services launched in the past year alone, with no platform connecting buyers to the new shape of supply. That gap has been open for years. We're building the company that fills it. Role summary Founding Applied AI Engineer to work directly with our Lead Intelligence Product Engineer and the Founders on an entirely net-new product line. You will have true full-stack ownership from Postgres schema to the user interface, collaborating directly with the core team on prompt architecture, agentic workflow design, and our long-term technical roadmap. The team is intentionally small, flat, and built for maximum execution velocity. This is a high-autonomy seat with real room to grow. As an early champion of Matchii's intelligence layer, you will experiment, ship, and directly shape how we turn unstructured enterprise data into precise, automated scopes of work (SoW) and delivery workflows. As the engineering function scales, the right person will naturally grow into the foundational technical leader for our AI practice. What you'll own - The AI Workflow Pipeline (From Blueprint to Production): You will own the architecture and reliability of our multi-step AI inference pipelines. This means taking full responsibility for prompt chaining strategy, structured data parsing, and fallback/recovery mechanisms that ensure our core AI features never fail silently. - The Data-to-UX Delivery Cycle: You will have true end-to-end code ownership. From architecting the Postgres schemas that house enterprise data, to designing the API layers, down to shipping the interactive user interfaces where clients interact with our AI—the delivery of net-new features starts and ends with you. - AI Output Quality & Evaluation: You will own the benchmarking and continuous optimization of Matchii’s intelligence outputs. You will define the evaluation frameworks and test cases that safeguard against model regression, ensuring our automated Scopes of Work (SoW) maintain enterprise-grade precision and reliability. - Foundational Engineering Culture: As a founding member, you will own the engineering standards for our AI practice. You’ll choose the tools, establish code maintainability best practices, design developer workflows, and help lay the cultural foundation for the engineering team that will eventually scale underneath you. Who we're looking for - 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record in high-growth technology startups, AI/SaaS ventures, or building complex, data-driven platforms. - System Modeling & Optimization: Strong understanding of system architecture, data modeling (e.g., Postgres schemas), and the resource cost tracking, token budget optimization, and latency management of high-scale LLM production environments. - Translating Insight into Engineering: Ability to connect complex enterprise data, unstructured business inputs, and operational insights into actionable engineering solutions—specifically turning raw data into structured, automated workflows (such as SoWs). - Industry & Tech Curiosity: Deep interest in global technology trends, the AI/SaaS landscape, agentic design patterns, and emerging engineering methodologies. - Advanced AI Augmentation: Highly proficient in leveraging and extending modern AI tools, prompt-chaining frameworks, and automation tooling to obsessively enhance internal development velocity and product performance. Why this, why now As our Founding Applied AI Engineer, you will directly shape how Matchii processes enterprise intelligence, scales its core product lines, and automates high-value workflows. You’ll have full architectural visibility and ownership across our entire technical stack—from designing optimizing Postgres data schemas to orchestrating the advanced AI pipelines that turn complex, unstructured client briefs into precise, executable Scopes of Work (SoW). As we enter our next stage of growth, we are building the foundational intelligence systems, frameworks, and agentic workflows needed to scale sustainably. You’ll play a critical role in defining our engineering standards, predicting and eliminating client-side or model performance bottlenecks before they surface, and ensuring our technology remains lightyears ahead of market expectations. How we hire 1. Intro call (30 min). 2. Founder call: the market and what you've closed. 3. Assessment. 4. References & offer.