Senior Full-Stack Developer / Technical Lead — Travel Platform

We’re building a travel platform that connects travelers, independent travel experts, suppliers, and travel brands through discovery, planning services, hosted journeys, verified experience, and rewards.

Our goal is to help travelers discover the right people and experiences while giving travel professionals better ways to showcase their expertise, collaborate, and grow their businesses.

The founder brings extensive industry experience through a family-owned travel agency established in 2000. A substantial application and detailed product designs already exist. We’re looking for a hands-on Senior Full-Stack Developer / Technical Lead to help complete the MVP and become a long-term technical partner as the business grows.

The opportunity

You’ll work directly with the founder, influence technical decisions, and help turn a detailed product vision into a reliable platform.

We need someone who understands how the entire product fits together: how content connects to brands and experts, how a customer moves from discovery to a paid service, and how completed travel supports trustworthy reviews, portfolios, and rewards.

Our immediate priority is to assess the existing application, finish the agreed MVP workflows, and prepare for an initial release to travel experts and supplier/travel brands, followed by broader access as the required functionality is verified.

What already exists

A Next.js, React, and TypeScript application using Prisma and Stripe integrations.

Detailed HTML prototypes and implementation instructions across the platform.

Existing account, profile, discovery, proposal, payment, journey, and rewards functionality.

An initial comparison of the designs against the code, identifying implementation gaps for independent validation.

The work includes both completing existing functionality and implementing remaining approved MVP designs. We want to preserve useful code and make thoughtful improvements.

What you’ll own

Understand the current codebase, product rules, and relationships between features.

Identify what is working, what is incomplete, and what still needs testing.

Create a realistic completion plan with milestones, estimated hours, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.

Implement approved designs and the backend behavior needed to make them function.

Connect travel brands, experts, services, inspirational content, journeys, bookings, and verified work through consistent shared records.

Complete and test payments, payouts, membership benefits, rewards balances, and participation credits.

Enforce permissions, privacy, and eligibility rules on the server.

Test successful workflows alongside failures, retries, cancellations, and duplicate actions.

Maintain staging, support deployment, and document how to operate and maintain the platform.

Raise unclear requirements and technical risks early, with practical recommendations.

Working with the founder

I’m a hands-on, nontechnical founder with deep travel industry experience and a strong product vision. I use ChatGPT and Claude to help develop HTML prototypes, designs, and workflow instructions.

I’m looking for someone who enjoys discussing ideas, understands the business behind the screens, and can translate that vision into dependable software. You should be comfortable asking questions, explaining tradeoffs in plain English, and recommending a simpler approach when it better serves the goal.

We will keep the agreed MVP scope separate from future ideas. Your judgment will help us decide what to build now, what to defer, and how to avoid unnecessary work.

AI-assisted development is welcome. You remain responsible for understanding, reviewing, testing, and maintaining the code you deliver.

Experience we’re looking for

Strong hands-on Next.js, React, TypeScript, and backend development experience.

Relational databases, Prisma, data modeling, and migrations.

Stripe payment workflows and webhooks; Stripe Connect experience is particularly valuable.

Authentication, role-based access, and server-side validation.

Transaction records, rewards balances, or other systems where financial accuracy and duplicate prevention matter.

Experience taking over an existing application and bringing it to a reliable release.

Practical testing, debugging, deployment, and production support skills.

Excellent spoken and written English, including clear communication with a nontechnical founder.

U.S. location and reliable overlap with Central Time business hours.

Marketplace, membership, booking, or travel technology experience is a plus. Evidence of delivering and maintaining real products matters more than a particular degree.

How we’ll measure progress

We value working outcomes and clear communication:

Agreed milestones with demonstrable completion criteria.

Regular written updates and short recorded demonstrations.

Current code in our company-controlled GitHub repository.

Early notice of blockers, changing estimates, or delivery risks.

Clear distinctions between designed, implemented, tested, and ready to release.

Documentation that allows the business to maintain the platform without depending on one person’s private knowledge.

Engagement and budget

This is a contract engagement to start, with the intention of building a long-term working relationship.

Our initial budget is $5,000–$10,000 per month, depending on your rate, availability, and agreed workload. There may be short-term flexibility for a clearly defined milestone. This is a contract budget, not a full-time employee salary or a guarantee of a fixed number of hours.

We expect to begin with a paid, time-boxed technical assessment and a small delivery milestone. We will agree on scope, spending limits, and acceptance criteria before larger implementation work begins.

For the right person, the relationship can grow into a broader technical leadership role as the business develops.

To apply

Please share:

An existing application you took over, improved, or brought to launch, and what you personally contributed.

Your relevant experience with Next.js, databases, Stripe, and connected marketplace workflows.

How you would approach the first week on this project.

Your hourly rate, weekly availability, U.S. location/time zone, and earliest start date.

What interests you about working directly with a founder to build a travel business over time.

Relevant work samples and references are welcome. Shortlisted candidates will receive more detailed materials privately. We do not expect unpaid implementation work during the application process.