Senior Backend Engineer (Contract to Hire)

ABOUT ANDO

Ando is building AI-native workforce infrastructure for the 80M hourly workers in the U.S. and hundreds of millions globally.

Labor is the last broken supply chain. Forecasting, allocation, and professional identity remain fragmented across static tools and manual decision-making. Ando is rebuilding this system from first principles.

We start with highly accurate AI-generated demand forecasts, move to allocation-first labor optimization, and compound value through a persistent labor graph that captures skills, reliability, availability, and performance across time and employers. Over time, this becomes a professional identity layer and intelligent system serving both enterprises and frontline workers.

Ando is a Seed-stage company backed by Slow Ventures and experienced operators. We are live with real customers and entering a phase where architectural clarity, learning loops, and AI systems quality are foundational to long-term success.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to own the core of our platform: a PostgreSQL data layer and Python/FastAPI services running on AWS. This role is heavy on database design and query performance, and heavy on AWS — you'll be building, running, and hardening the infrastructure our product depends on, not just writing application code. You'll shape the API contracts consumed by our Next.js web app and React Native mobile app, and help extend our AI/ML capabilities.

This is a startup role. We're looking for someone who can take a loosely-defined problem, figure out the right approach with minimal hand-holding, and drive it to done. You'll get real ownership and real ambiguity — ideally at the same time.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• PostgreSQL: Design PostgreSQL schemas, indexes, and queries for a growing, high-write scheduling and forecasting workload, and own performance troubleshooting (query plans, indexing strategy, migrations) at scale.

• AWS: Build, operate, and harden our AWS infrastructure — Lambda, RDS, App Runner, Bedrock — using Terraform, with an eye toward cost, reliability, and security.

• AI-assisted engineering: You use AI agents (Claude, Bedrock, MCP-based tooling) as a core part of how you write, test, and ship code daily — this isn't optional tooling, it's how the team works.

• Design, build, and scale backend services in Python/FastAPI.

• Own REST/OpenAPI contracts and generated clients shared across our Next.js (React/TypeScript) web app and Expo/React Native mobile app.

• Extend AI-assisted features using AWS Bedrock, Claude, and MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations.

• Collaborate with data/ML on forecasting pipelines built with Prophet, Pandas, and NumPy.

• Write and maintain pytest test suites and strengthen CI/CD gates in GitHub Actions.

• Participate in architecture decisions (ADRs), code review, and mentor other engineers.

• Partner closely with product, mobile, and data teams to ship end-to-end features — often with only a rough spec to start from.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 5+ years of professional backend engineering experience, including production Python (FastAPI, Flask, or Django).

• Strong PostgreSQL expertise: Deep, hands-on PostgreSQL experience — schema design, indexing, query optimization, and migrations in a production system, not just CRUD access.

• Solid AWS experience: Real ownership of AWS infrastructure — you've built and operated services on Lambda, RDS, and/or App Runner (or close equivalents), and are comfortable with IAM, networking, and cost trade-offs, ideally with Terraform.

• Experience designing, versioning, and documenting REST APIs (OpenAPI/Swagger) consumed by multiple client platforms.

• Comfortable with containerized local development (Docker / Docker Compose).

• Startup mindset: A self-starter who works well independently and is genuinely comfortable with ambiguity — you don't need a fully-scoped ticket to make progress, and you're willing to make a call and adjust rather