Founding Backend Engineer — Drink Discovery Platform

Compensation: Paid Part-time contract to start, with equity and contract extension available based on performance

About Diyo

Diyo is a drink discovery platform — cocktails, mocktails, coffee, boba, and specialty drinks all in one place. Users explore community recipes, scan ingredients with AI, and discover local independent venues near them.

We're a small founder-led team building a mobile app ahead of App Store launch.
10% of every Premium subscription supports clean water access.

The Role

This is a hands-on backend seat on a small, fast-moving team. You'll start with a focused, well-defined engagement, helping us finalize our AWS Amplify production environment and get it fully stable ahead of launch. From there, you'll move into ongoing feature ownership.

You'll work directly with the founder and our engineering team.

Your work ships directly into a real app.

What You'll Own

First (paid contract engagement):

• Help finalize and stabilize our AWS Amplify production environment (AppSync/GraphQL, Cognito, DynamoDB) ahead of launch
• Work through our existing backend codebase and CI/CD setup, resolving any environment or deployment issues

From there, ongoing ownership:

• Short-form video feed backend — schema, feed API, upload flow, interaction layer
• Push notification infrastructure — device registration, core social triggers, user preference management
• Backend support for our AI-powered scan feature — integration work coordinating with our data/ML team

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 2–4+ years backend engineering experience — you've shipped and maintained production systems
• Strong AWS fundamentals — Lambda, DynamoDB, AppSync/GraphQL, S3, Cognito
• Comfortable with AWS Amplify specifically, including CI/CD pipelines and environment management
• Node.js or Python — comfortable in both, fluent in at least one
• Experience with a mobile app backend (iOS preferred)
• Comfortable operating with minimal direction — you diagnose issues and drive them to resolution

Preferred:

Experience with push notification infrastructure (APNs)
Video delivery/upload pipeline experience — or strong fundamentals to get there fast
Familiarity with ML inference integration (SageMaker or similar)
Genuine interest in drinks, food, or local discovery
The Stack

AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, AppSync/GraphQL, S3, Cognito), Node.js/Python, GitHub Actions CI/CD, Flutter frontend (you own the API layer).

The Offer
First 30 days: paid trial contract, ~12 hrs/week, $25/hour ($1,200 total), tied to milestone deliverables:
After the trial: if the work and fit are strong, we'll talk about moving to an ongoing part-time or full-time role, with equity up to 1% based on continued contribution.
Fast feedback loop, real ownership over what you build

Trial Milestones (First 30 Days)
Production deployment pipeline verified working — $300
Production cutover diagnosed and successfully executed — $300
Core launch-blocking backend items re-verified on live production — $300
App Store submission achieved, or demonstrable progress on push notification infrastructure — $300

Why This Role
You'll own a larger piece of the technical surface than you would at a funded, larger company. What you build ships directly to real users. This starts as a focused, bounded engagement — a low-risk way for both sides to see if it's a fit before talking about anything longer-term.

If you're someone who geeks out over cocktails, coffee, boba, or discovering a great local spot, you'll feel right at home building the backend for it. And knowing that every Premium subscription you help ship also funds real clean water access is a nice bonus on top of good, meaningful engineering work.

How to Apply

Send a short note — your background, relevant AWS Amplify/production experience, and interest in joining our team.