A venture-backed startup building AI-native software for state and local government is hiring a Platform Engineer in New York City. You will own the foundation everything else runs on: data ingestion pipelines, the AI workflow engine, and the core building blocks used across hundreds of government products. Founded by a repeat founder, the company already reports fast-growing revenue.
About the Company
Mission: Modern operating software for counties, cities, school districts and utilities
Market: A $100B+ government software space that modernization largely skipped
Traction: Venture-backed, early-stage, with accelerating revenue
Team: Small, in-person engineering team working directly with the CEO
Why This Role Stands Out
Foundational Ownership: This is a core engineering role, not a feature assignment
Real Impact: Your platform powers tools like court systems, school helpdesks and water utility dashboards
Equity Upside: Base salary plus meaningful early-stage equity
Position Overview
This Platform Engineer role sits at the center of the product. Forward-deployed product managers embed with city and county teams and configure solutions on top of what you build. Your work makes that fast, safe and repeatable. The hard problems are real: pulling clean data out of decades-old mainframes, keeping multi-step AI workflows auditable enough to defend in a public records request, and designing building blocks simple enough for non-engineers to use.
Why This Role Matters: Government software has been underserved for decades. As Platform Engineer, you help decide how it works for the next ten years, working side by side with the founder on architecture choices that carry into every future deployment.
Key Responsibilities
- Data ingestion and modeling: Build connectors, pipelines and normalization layers for mainframe exports, Oracle databases, flat files and vendor APIs
- AI workflow infrastructure: Create task queuing, state management, retries, human approval gates and audit trails for long-running agentic workflows
- Core platform primitives: Maintain the workflow engine, role-based permissions, form and action framework, and event system
- Security and compliance: Deliver tenant isolation, granular access control and auditability, with a path toward FedRAMP, CJIS and HIPAA
- Architecture: Partner directly with the CEO on long-term technical decisions
Qualifications & Requirements
- Proven track record of taking real systems from blank page to production; shipped work matters more than pedigree
- Strong backend skills in Python and/or Node, with sound data modeling and API design
- Enough frontend ability to build and reason about an interface
- Daily hands-on use of AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex or Gemini CLI
- Good instincts for when a pattern should become a platform primitive
- US citizenship, required for government work
- Willingness to work on-site in Flatiron five days a week
Nice to Have
- Developer platform or internal tooling experience, plus devops depth
- Agentic AI orchestration experience
- Background in regulated fields such as healthcare, finance or legal
Benefits
Medical, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), paid maternity and paternity leave, tuition assistance, commuter benefits and disability insurance.
Who Should Apply?
- Backend Engineers: Ready to own core infrastructure at an early-stage startup
- Data and Integration Engineers: Skilled at taming legacy systems
- AI-Native Builders: Who code daily with AI tools and want to build agent workflows
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