Lead Full-Stack SW Engineer

We welcome highly experienced candidates preferred from a +/- CET time zone. At Circleup, we're connecting people in person - offline - by simplifying the process of scheduling a meet-up and booking a place at your favorite restaurant in your city within a few seconds. Minimum effort spent on scheduling, choosing a time, and deciding on a place to meet. Circleup enhances the efficiency of maintaining your relationships and professional network. Unlike individually having to think about whom to meet again and doing the inefficient communication ping-pong to figure out when and where to meet, Circleup automates to reduce manual work. You will save time, reduce your mental workload, and get more quality time with people you know and like. As a result, you will be better connected and happier. __ At this point, we are self-funded and at a pre-product-market-fit stage. You'll lead the development effort which means you also take technical decisions. You'll have a part-time team (all functions) available and you'll make sure each team member's capacity is utilized optimally. It's all about getting most out of the resources available. Joining Circleup as a Lead Engineer presents a unique opportunity to contribute from the very beginning and play a pivotal role in shaping both the product and the organization. As one of the earliest team members, you will have significant equity ownership, influence over key decisions, and the chance to help recruit and mentor other engineers as we scale. This position offers a high degree of autonomy and self-agency, empowering you to make impactful contributions across the entire product and technical stack. We encourage a deep understanding of our software architecture and business logic, enabling you to make informed decisions and valuable contributions across the entire product ecosystem. You will directly shape the trajectory of the company, witnessing and influencing its growth from the ground up. If you value the opportunity to take ownership, innovate, and be part of building something meaningful with long-term rewards, Circleup provides an exceptional environment to realize that potential. Therefore, we make an effort to not limit the scope of one person's work. You will be encouraged to bring up your own ideas on new features, and treat them like a science experiment with users: observation -> research -> hypothesis -> experiment design -> experimentation -> data analysis -> conclusion interpretation -> communication -> refinement. Key values that are important to us: Trust - We have an open-door policy, which means we encourage team members to talk about problems they see Accountability - we expect people joining to take ownership of their role and potentially beyond to drive success. We expect transparency about mistakes that happen or are made and avoid excuses so that we can all help to get solutions faster together. Responsibility - as a company, we have a responsibility to act in good faith towards users, customers, investors, and potentially other stakeholders. We expect team members to act responsibly. Integrity - building a company requires the highest levels of integrity from each team member. Tasks Join us if you're excited to shape the future of social scheduling and you have the skills to progress our mobile development efforts. Core responsibilities: Design and implement scalable backend services using Python/Django and AWS Architect and maintain our cloud infrastructure on AWS, ensuring high availability and performance Establish and maintain security best practices across our infrastructure Drive the implementation of test-driven development practices and maintain high code quality standards Design and implement RESTful APIs that power our mobile applications Set up and maintain CI/CD pipelines for automated testing and deployment Collaborate with the mobile team to ensure seamless integration between frontend and backend systems Monitor system performance and optimize where necessary Help shape our technical roadmap and make key architectural decisions Requirements Strong expertise in Python and Django framework Extensive experience with AWS services (e.g., EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, API Gateway) Proven track record of designing and implementing secure, scalable backend systems Strong background in test-driven development and writing maintainable tests Experience with CI/CD tools and practices (e.g., GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI) Proficiency with Git and version control best practices Experience with relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred) and database design Understanding of security best practices and experience implementing them Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail Frontend (Flutter/React): Create multi-platform apps for iOS/Android using Flutter. Build engaging and user-friendly interfaces that align with UI/UX guidelines. Create reusable and well-structured components. Implement efficient state management solutions. Proactively research and adopt new technologies to enhance front-end development. Preferred Qualifications Experience working in early-stage startups Knowledge of containerization (Docker) and orchestration (Kubernetes) Experience with message queuing systems (e.g., RabbitMQ, AWS SQS) Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools (e.g., CloudWatch, ELK stack) Experience with microservices architecture Contributions to open-source projects Benefits Salary: 2000 EUR / month + equity. Salary will increase after raising investment. Relocation support to Switzerland if we achieve product-market fit and raise investment in the near future. Download the current app via -