Founding Engineer (Backend, Architect)

Department: Engineering, Product, & Design (EPD)

Location: San Francisco, Remote - USA

Employment Type: FullTime

About Tempo

Tempo was started by three co-founders with complementary backgrounds across product, engineering, operations, and go-to-market. Our team includes a former founder, multiple successful exits, experience leading businesses to scale, multiple fundraises, and experience at great tech companies like Airbnb, dbt Labs, and Automattic. We’re united by a desire to build for our customers, using today’s best technology to help organizations better understand and support the people they serve.

We believe what we’re working on must be built, but we know that only a small group of committed people who care about putting great things into the world can build this company. The early team will define our foundation and form our culture. Our early teammates hold founding titles (e.g., Founding Engineer, Founding Designer), receive shares rather than options, and are compensated in line with the stage and their role in bringing this company to life. San Francisco is preferred, though we’re open to remote for the right people and can discuss relocation support.

Yeehaw let's build!

About You

• Founders. You thrive without a formal playbook and will have a meaningful impact on the company’s trajectory. You are not confined to your title’s role description. You approach new challenges with determination, see setbacks as a part of the journey, and don’t let your title define your impact.

• High-Caliber. You set uncompromising expectations for craft, pace, and judgment. You take full ownership, holding yourself and your teammates to the highest standards.

• Customer-orientation. You are comfortable joining sales/user conversations and turning messy feedback into product decisions, with strong empathy for how people actually work.

• Taste. You are opinionated about what “good” looks like, from interaction and visual design to how we show up in the world. You will have an outsized impact on brand and culture.

• Passion. You go the extra mile inside and outside of the office. You know what gives you energy, and in doing so, show up as the best version of yourself at work. You support others to do the same, while investing in an environment where building is sustainable.

The Role

We’re hiring our first two to three backend engineers. You will be among the first engineers to join the team working alongside our co-founders and owning backend decisions and system architecture. The decisions you make will set the standard for our product’s usability, polish, and overall feel.

Responsibilities

• Share the architectural load with founders and lead backend design and tradeoffs.

• Lay foundations for services, data models, and integrations that power a fast, interactive UX.

• Keep the surface area small while we learn, evolving deliberately as the product hardens.

• Work directly with customers and join sales conversations to keep choices pragmatic.

• Set how we build at this stage and mentor peers to raise the bar for pace and quality.

• Operate in greenfield with the need to build safeguards and instrumentation along the way.

• Form product opinions by regularly meeting with customers to understand needs, validate solutions, and close the loop on what we ship.

• Build our engineering and broader culture with care and intentionality.

Experience

• Some combination of 8 to 12 years in backend or infrastructure work, recent staff scope, or a strong track record owning architecture for a new product.

• A proven track record of designing systems and supporting engineering teams to deliver while making reasonable decisions between quality and timelines.

• Significant experience working on greenfield engineering products with experience designing systems from scratch with graceful evolution.

• Experience at startups or a proven track record of excelling at work beyond the typical scope of an engineering role.

• Experience at startups or a proven track record of excelling at work beyond the typical scope of an engineering role.

Compensation & Benefits

Tempo is committed to supporting teammates in all aspects of life. We believe that doing your best work is contingent on knowing that the health and well-being of you and your family are taken care of. Together, we can build an environment where we all do the best work of our careers.

• Competitive compensation package with founder shares versus options.

• 100% coverage of health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents.

• Flexible schedules & paid time off, parental leave, and a Work Life Improvement stipend to help you do great work.

• Sunday scaries free work environment and swag you’ll actually like.