Founding Tech Lead - Full Stack

Company Description

Living Forever AI is an early-stage interactive genealogy platform. We capture a living person's voice, personality, and stories and turn them into a conversational AI video avatar that family members can talk with and learn from for generations to come.

We are in the final stages of our Beta launch. We currently have two offshore engineers shipping the core build and are looking for someone local to help us finish it and harden it for launch.

Our mission is to help people preserve their memories, knowledge, personality, and life stories in a rich, interactive form their family can actually engage with. We combine conversational AI, voice, and video avatars into a single deeply personal product experience. As a founding team member, you will help shape both the product and the technology that bring this vision to life, in a culture built on curiosity, fast iteration, and long-term thinking.

Role Description

As the Founding Tech Lead, you will own the end-to-end technical implementation of our core product. This is a full-time hybrid role based in the Southeast with on-site collaboration and work-from-home flexibility. You will build and maintain our TypeScript/React frontend and our serverless backend on Supabase Edge Functions, and you will own the AI layer that powers the product: production LLM and RAG pipelines and our real-time conversational video avatar integration. A major part of this role is managing our third-party AI vendors, holding partners accountable on latency, quality, and reliability. Day to day, you will write production-ready code, review the work of our offshore engineers, define architecture, select technologies, and establish engineering best practices. You will work closely with the founder to translate product concepts into technical roadmaps, prototype quickly, and iterate based on user feedback. Over time, you will help recruit, mentor, and lead a small engineering team.

Qualifications

Full-stack development with TypeScript and React on the frontend and serverless backends (Deno-based Supabase Edge Functions), plus REST API and webhook integration.

Production experience with LLM and RAG pipelines and real-time conversational AI

Strong PostgreSQL skills, including RLS, triggers, functions, and migrations.

Experience with managed cloud platforms (Vercel and Supabase) and CI/CD via GitHub PR workflow, branch protection, and automated review.

Proven ability to lead and mentor engineers and collaborate across functional areas, including with non-technical stakeholders.

Demonstrated experience owning features from concept to production in a fast-paced startup environment.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Compensation

We are a early stage startup and this is a founding-team role with a deferred compensation structure during our pre-launch phase. You will receive a $4,000/month draw until we launch and reach 1,500 users. During that period, your salary accrues at a rate of up to $125,000/year. Once we hit that milestone, your full salary kicks in, and the accrued balance is paid out over the following 12 months. The role also includes up to 4% in equity options.

What we expect

We are a small, fast-moving team working across multiple time zones, and we are heads-down through launch. This is not a 9-to-5. We work hard, we work odd hours to stay in sync across zones, and we expect a founding team member to bring that same intensity. If you want predictable hours and clear boundaries between work and life right now, this is not the right role. If you want ownership and the chance to build something from the ground up, it is.