Platform Engineer

REAL New York is a residential and commercial real estate brokerage in New York City, around 100 agents. Over the last two years we built our own operating platform: a heavily customized Zoho Creator CRM, a PostgreSQL data layer that syncs it with payroll, accounting, and listing systems, a suite of internal dashboards and tools, and an AI query layer on top. The platform is live, the business runs on it every day, and it was built and is run by our Director of Innovation. This role exists so it no longer depends on one person.

The Role

You will be the platform's second engineer. You are trained directly by the person who built the system, over a structured six-month ramp, with the goal that you can run day-to-day platform operations on your own: maintenance, bug fixes, monitoring, integrations, and scoped feature work. This is a long-term seat, not a project contract. You report to the Director of Innovation and work inside an existing weekly cadence: priorities set Tuesdays, everything tracked in our ticket system, delivery recapped weekly.

What You'll Do

• Own routine maintenance and bug fixes across the platform, working from a prioritized ticket queue with effort estimates
• Monitor and maintain the data sync layer (Zoho Creator to PostgreSQL, every 5 minutes) plus integrations with QuickBooks, Follow Up Boss, and Google Workspace
• Build scoped features inside the existing architecture: Python services, dashboard views, workflow automations, Zoho customizations
• Answer technical questions from staff and support the team that handles training and helpdesk
• Document what you touch, so knowledge lives in the system instead of in one head

Must Haves

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Strong Python. Our services run on Flask with Jinja templates and HTMX frontends
• Strong SQL and real PostgreSQL experience: schema design, joins across messy real-world data, query debugging
• Experience integrating and maintaining third-party APIs (REST, OAuth, webhooks)
• Genuine willingness to work in a low-code platform. Our CRM is Zoho Creator with its Deluge scripting language. Nobody arrives knowing it and we will train you, but a large share of the routine work lives there. If low-code work sounds beneath you, this is the wrong role
• Strong written and spoken English (C1 or equivalent). You will write tickets, documentation, and messages to non-technical staff
• At least 4 hours of daily overlap with 9am to 6pm New York time
• Reliable remote setup: stable power and internet, with a backup plan for outages

Nice to Have

• Experience with Zoho Creator or comparable low-code platforms
• Familiarity with LLM APIs (we use the Claude API with tiered model routing) and comfort working inside an existing AI architecture
• Real estate, fintech, or payments domain experience
• Node.js, Tailwind, cron-based job orchestration, Cloudflare

Work Location: Remote

Compensation: $4,500 to $7,000 USD per month depending on experience, as a full-time independent contractor, paid monthly. Long-term engagement with a six-month structured onboarding.

How We Hire:

• Resume review
• 30-minute technical screen: you walk us through a system you built and we go deep on the decisions
• Paid trial task: a small, scoped piece of real work, compensated at a fair rate, typically under a week
• Offer - We move fast for the right person.