Founding Senior Backend Engineer Drink Discovery Platform

## 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 with a live mobile app and a real user base launching on the App Store in July. 10% of every Premium subscription funds clean water access. ## The Role This is a founding team seat. You're the third engineer on a product that's live, growing, and shipping fast. You'll own two areas of the backend: a consumer-facing social content surface and the infrastructure that powers our partnerships layer. Right now the focus is shipping for launch. Post-launch, you expand into the business side of the product. You own both arcs. You'll work directly with the founder and alongside a senior backend engineer and a Flutter frontend engineer. No bureaucracy. Your work ships directly into a live app used by real people. ## What You'll Own Before launch: - Complete and ship a short-form video feed backend — schema, feed API, upload flow, interaction layer - Build push notification infrastructure — device registration, core social triggers, user preference management - Backend support for our AI-powered scan feature — integration work coordinating with our ML team Post-launch: - Infrastructure for venue and brand partnerships - Continued ownership of the video feed - Support core backend as the product scales ## What We're Looking For Required: - 3–5+ years backend engineering experience — you've shipped production systems, not just side projects - Strong AWS fundamentals — Lambda, DynamoDB, AppSync/GraphQL, S3, Cognito - Node.js or Python — comfortable in both, fluent in at least one - Experience building and shipping a mobile app backend (iOS preferred) - Video delivery and upload pipeline experience — or strong enough fundamentals to get there fast - Comfortable operating with minimal direction — you figure things out, you don't wait to be told Preferred: - Experience with push notification infrastructure (APNs) - Short-form video feed experience — feed ranking, engagement signal instrumentation - Familiarity with ML inference integration (SageMaker or similar) - Genuine interest in drinks, food, or local discovery — if you know your way around a cocktail menu or specialty coffee shop, that instinct makes you better at this job ## The Stack AWS (Lambda, DynamoDB, AppSync/GraphQL, S3, Cognito), Node.js/Python, Flutter frontend (you own the API layer). ## The Offer - 2–3% equity — 4-year vest, 1-year cliff. Monthly vesting after that. Founding-team equity priced for the risk you're taking, not an advisor grant. - $1,000 signing bonus paid end of July. Performance-based compensation kicks in at launch, tied directly to app growth. As Diyo scales, so does the opportunity. This is the kind of role that's hard to find — real ownership, real equity, a product people actually use, and a mission that isn't manufactured. If you've been at a larger company collecting a salary while someone else makes the decisions, this is the other side of that. ## Why This Role The product is live in beta. The user base is growing. You're not joining a deck — you're joining a product in motion. You'll own a larger piece of the technical surface than you ever would at a funded Series A. Every decision you make ships. Every system you build is infrastructure for a business with a clear path to revenue. ## How to Apply Send a short note — your background, what you've shipped that's most relevant, and why Diyo. Tell us what you've built and why you're interested. If there's a fit, you'll hear back within 72 hours.