Founding Software Engineer

Job Description

Our Product

Ryvn builds the deployment infrastructure that powers mission-critical software in industries where reliability matters most — from healthcare and finance to manufacturing and beyond. Our platform enables teams to deliver software continuously and securely across complex environments, replacing fragile manual workflows with intelligent, automated orchestration.

We’re rethinking how modern enterprises ship code — ensuring that updates move safely from development to production with speed, precision, and confidence.

Our Company

Ryvn is a Y Combinator–backed, seed-stage startup based in New York City, where our fully in-person team is building the next generation of deployment infrastructure. We combine the pace of a startup with the discipline of production-grade engineering — solving hard technical problems that have immediate real-world impact.

Our team draws experience from Palantir, Vercel, and Capital One, blending expertise in distributed systems, developer platforms, and enterprise software. We’re backed by top investors who share our belief that the most critical industries deserve infrastructure that’s fast, reliable, and built to last.

About the Role

As a Founding Software Engineer at Ryvn, you’ll design and build distributed systems that transform how organizations deploy and manage software at scale. You’ll work across the stack — from core platform services and APIs to performance optimization and developer experience — owning problems end-to-end and shipping code that runs in production environments across healthcare, finance, and manufacturing.

You’ll work side-by-side with the founders to shape Ryvn’s technical architecture, product roadmap, and engineering culture. This is a rare opportunity to join early, build foundational systems from first principles, and help define the DNA of a company reimagining how software reaches the world.

What You’ll Do

Build at scale: Design, build, and maintain highly available systems that orchestrate software deployment across hundreds of production environments

Shape the foundation: Work directly with the founding team to define Ryvn’s technical direction and architecture

Solve and streamline: Identify inefficiencies and design elegant solutions — with the autonomy to ship fast and keep our technology ahead of the curve

Own complex systems: Debug performance issues across distributed systems, from backend services to production infrastructure

Balance tradeoffs: Navigate engineering decisions thoughtfully — balancing short-term velocity with long-term scalability and impact

What We’re Looking For

3+ years of software development experience, ideally including time at a small, high-growth company

Full-stack fluency: Comfortable working across web frameworks, APIs, and databases in multiple programming languages

Strong technical judgment: Able to make pragmatic, well-reasoned tradeoffs to drive projects forward

Ownership mindset: You take initiative, see problems through, and care deeply about the systems you build

Nice-to-haves

Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure

Experience deploying and scaling Kubernetes, Helm, and Docker

Familiarity with CI/CD tooling, especially GitHub Actions

Experience building with Go, TypeScript, and React

Comfort working with Postgres and S3

Experience using Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, or Mimir for observability

Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation

Life at Ryvn

Fully in-person team in NYC

Company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance

Unlimited PTO and sick leave

Annual professional development stipend

Company-paid lunch, dinner, and coffee

Annual retreats and team offsites

Compensation Range: $160K - $220K

Full-time