Founding Engineer - Backend

We're looking for a Founding Software Engineer with deep expertise in backend to help develop the next-generation AI platform for market due diligence. You'll architect the AI-powered engine that orchestrates autonomous research agents and voice AI pipelines to create the next-generation of market reports for investment professionals in Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Private Credit, and Corporate M&A.

About DiligenceSquared

DiligenceSquared automates commercial due diligence for Private Equity funds. We're YC-backed, just raised a significant Seed round, and our clients include some of the world's largest PE funds.

The market is $10B+ annually - PE funds pay McKinsey, BCG, and Bain $500K-$1M per report. Our AI agents do this work faster, cheaper, and with full auditability (every claim linked to source).

Our founders bought and sold these reports at Blackstone and BCG where they held senior positions. We have deep experience with the workflows and know exactly what the market needs - and now we're automating it.

What you will do:

• Build new product features and experiences end-to-end, everything from database models to API endpoints, and integrating them with UI components for our web and AI Voice Agent Application
• Design and build new AI-powered modules from scratch (e.g., market sizing, competitive analysis) that become core capabilities of our research platform
• Build and own product foundations (AI agent orchestration, voice AI pipelines, app and API performance, intelligent automations)
• Architect scalable backend services with complex async processing and background task orchestration
• Apply learnings from each project into the product, so we're 1% better everyday (Law of Compounding is real. After all, we are founded by investment professionals)

Qualifications:

• 3+ years of professional Python backend experience
• Strong expertise building production APIs (FastAPI, Django, or similar)
• Experience building agentic systems with LLM platforms (Anthropic, OpenAI, or similar)
• Deep hands-on experience with LLMs in production - building reliable agentic systems, not just API calls
• Experience with PostgreSQL and SQL database design
• Understanding of async programming, job queues, and distributed systems
• Experience with background task orchestration and async processing workflows

Bonus:

• Experience with Anthropic Claude API and Agent SDK
• Familiarity with agent orchestration frameworks
• Background in AI/ML systems or voice AI
• Familiarity with vector databases and semantic search (pg_vector, etc.)
• Experience with Supabase or similar Backend-as-a-Service platforms
• Previous startup experience

Who you are:

• Obsess over system design and think deeply about technical trade-offs
• Take pride in your code and want to work with others who do the same
• Act with Urgency so we can empower you with Agency
• Pay high attention to detail and are curious about how great products work
• Feel discomfort when things don't move as fast as you feel they should

1. Founders Call
2. Technical Screen
3. Paid Work Trial
4. Offer