Lead Founding Engineer - AI Startup (Backend/Full-Stack)

Company Description
Applied Retention is a Mumbai-based AI startup building an innovative customer intelligence and decisioning platform designed to revolutionize marketing as we know it.

We are shifting the paradigm from traditional, static "if/then" journeys to dynamic, highly contextual 1:1 personalized customer experiences. Our mission is to empower businesses with cutting-edge AI/ML technology to foster deeper customer engagement and maximize marketing effectiveness. Join us in shaping the future of intelligent customer interactions.

The Role
As our Lead Founding Engineer, you will be the core technical pillar of the company. You will take complete ownership of the platform end-to-end: the systems that pull customer data out of warehouses, CRMs, and CEPs; the decisioning engine that selects the right offer, channel, and moment for every customer; and the API layer that pushes those decisions back out for execution.

You won't just be maintaining a product—you will be writing the core of it from scratch, making the foundational technical calls, and setting the engineering standard. This is a heavy individual contributor (IC) role initially, but as the first engineering hire, you will help build, mentor, and eventually lead the team behind the product.

What You'll Own
Core Architecture & Development: Architect and build the core platform, including ingestion data pipelines, AI/ML-driven data transformation, and marketing data delivery via APIs.

Foundational Decisions: Make the critical early calls on architecture, tech stack, build vs. buy, and launch prioritization.

Complex Integrations: Build robust, scalable integrations that connect to customer data warehouses, CRMs, and CEPs.

Scale & Security: Take full responsibility for reliability, security, and system scaling as our customer base and data volume grow.

Strategic Partnership: Work directly with the founder to shape the product roadmap, design, and long-term technical strategy.

Future Leadership: Lay the groundwork for engineering culture and help interview, onboard, and mentor future engineering hires.

What We're Looking For
Experience: 4–8 years of work experience in Backend, Data, Full-Stack Engineering, or Architect roles.

Tech Stack: Production-grade experience building and scaling systems in Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Redis, and AWS.

Systems Expertise: Deep systems and backend engineering knowledge, specifically with distributed systems, APIs, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure.

ML/Data Fluency: Enough working knowledge of Machine Learning and data concepts to architect a product whose core IP relies on decisioning models (you don’t have to build the models yourself, but you will build the infrastructure around them).

Startup DNA: Passionate, highly comfortable writing code daily, and able to thrive in 0-to-1 ambiguity with full technical ownership.

Bonus Points
Previous experience as a Founding Engineer or in an early technical leadership role at a fast-paced startup.

Experience building MarTech, data infrastructure, or B2B SaaS products that integrate heavily with third-party systems via APIs.

Fluent and up-to-date with integrating modern AI LLMs and utilizing coding assistants to accelerate development.

What You Get
Title & Impact: Lead Founding Engineer title with complete ownership of taking a massive tech product from 0 to 1.

Trajectory: A clear path to technical leadership/management as the company scales.

Compensation: Competitive salary + meaningful early-stage equity (standard 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff)