Lead Full Stack Engineer

ABOUT RETHINK FOOD

Rethink Food is a chef-led nonprofit building a more sustainable and equitable food system. We connect restaurants, community-based organizations, funders, government partners, healthcare organizations, and our own Sustainable Community Kitchen to provide high-quality meals while creating jobs and supporting local businesses.

We are now building the technology layer that will connect this network, make our operations radically more efficient, and give every stakeholder—from a kitchen manager to a donor—a clear view of what is happening and why it matters.

THE ROLE

Rethink Food is seeking a Lead Full-Stack Engineer to serve as the hands-on technical builder at the center of this work.

This is not an IT support position, a narrow feature-development role, or a job for someone who only manages other engineers. You will personally design, build, deploy, and operate products that support Rethink Food’s kitchens, restaurant network, community partners, funders, healthcare programs, government contracts, and internal teams.

Your job is to turn a complicated, real-world food system into software that is remarkably simple to use. A frontline operator should be able to complete a task in seconds. A CEO or COO should be able to understand the business at a glance.

You will work directly with Rethink Food’s leadership and teams across Operations, Programs, Finance, Development, and Communications. You will also help manage external technology partners and shape the future internal engineering team.

WHAT YOU WILL BUILD

The Rethink Command Center

Create a trusted, real-time operating system that answers the organization’s most important questions:

• How many meals were planned, produced, delivered, and verified?

• What did each meal actually cost—including food, labor, transportation, overhead, and reimbursements?

• Which contract, funder, donor, or program paid for each meal?

• What is the contribution margin by program, kitchen, restaurant, contract, and market?

• Where are we over budget, behind schedule, under capacity, or at risk?

• What should an operator or leader act on today?

The Rethink Network Marketplace

Build the platform connecting community demand, funding, restaurants, kitchens, and delivery:

• Map fulfilled and unfulfilled meal demand by community and geography.

• Allow community-based organizations to request meals, establish schedules, and communicate preferences.

• Match qualified restaurants and kitchens with funded opportunities.

• Support restaurant applications, partner selection, recurring production, delivery confirmation, and feedback.

• Give donors and funders clear, timely reporting on what their support made possible.

• Make it possible to launch the smallest useful version quickly, learn from real users, and expand responsibly.

Kitchen and Field Operations Tools

Develop simple, mobile-friendly products for production planning, inventory, meal counts, food safety, quality assurance, delivery, incident tracking, and partner communication.

An AI-Enabled Operating Layer

Build practical AI workflows that reduce administrative work rather than create more of it. This may include:

• Turning emails, forms, spreadsheets, and documents into structured workflows.

• Automating recurring operational, financial, donor, and board reporting.

• Identifying anomalies, missing information, delivery risks, and budget variances.

• Helping teams search contracts, operating procedures, partner records, and program history.

• Creating human-reviewed agents that assist with intake, follow-up, reconciliation, and communication.

A Reliable Data Foundation

Connect and rationalize data across systems such as BigQuery, HubSpot, financial tools, Google Workspace, Slack, existing portals, partner platforms, and operational spreadsheets.

You will establish clear data definitions so that “meal,” “delivery,” “cost,” “revenue,” “funding,” and “impact” mean the same thing throughout the organization.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Own products end-to-end: discovery, prioritization, user experience, architecture, implementation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement.

• Spend time with kitchen staff, program teams, finance staff, restaurants, and community partners to understand how work actually happens.

• Build polished interfaces, APIs, backend services, databases, integrations, and data pipelines.

• Establish secure authentication, role-based permissions, auditability, testing, documentation, observability, backups, and production support practices.

• Make disciplined build-versus-buy decisions and prevent unnecessary complexity.

• Use modern AI development tools to increase velocity without compromising security, reliability, or engineering judgment.

• Direct external engineers and vendors where appropriate while retaining ownership of the architecture and core product.

• Translate technical decisions into plain language and communicate risks, tradeoffs, progress, and costs clearly to nontechnical leaders.

• Help recruit and mentor additional engineers as Rethink Food’s technology function grows.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Within 90 Days

You have mapped the existing systems, data, workflows, risks, and technical debt; established a prioritized product roadmap; and shipped at least one meaningful production improvement used by Rethink Food staff.

Within Six Months

The first version of the Rethink Command Center is live. Leadership and operators can see reliable meal volumes, unit economics, delivery performance, contract performance, and exceptions without manually assembling multiple spreadsheets.

Within Twelve Months

• Rethink Food has a trusted operational data foundation.

• A marketplace and community-demand map MVP is operating in at least one market.

• One end-to-end workflow—from demand and funding through production, delivery, verification, and reporting—is running through the platform.

• Major recurring reports are substantially automated.

• Teams spend less time entering, reconciling, and searching for information.

• The technology is secure, documented, monitored, and ready to scale.

• Rethink Food has a clear plan for its next engineering hires and technology investments.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• At least seven years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent evidence of exceptional ability.

• A record of personally taking meaningful products from an ambiguous problem through architecture, production launch, and ongoing operation.

• Strong full-stack capability across modern frontend, backend, database, infrastructure, and integration work.

• Deep proficiency with technologies such as TypeScript, React or Next.js, Node.js and/or Python, SQL, PostgreSQL, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and CI/CD.

• Experience designing data models and integrating fragmented systems through APIs, webhooks, batch pipelines, and event-driven workflows.

• Production experience with AI-enabled products, including LLM APIs, structured outputs, retrieval, tool use, evaluations, guardrails, and human review.

• Strong product judgment and the ability to distinguish an essential workflow from an impressive but unnecessary feature.

• Experience implementing authentication, permissions, audit trails, monitoring, testing, and secure handling of sensitive information.

• The ability to work effectively with frontline operators, executives, designers, vendors, and nontechnical subject-matter experts.

• Comfort operating with significant autonomy, imperfect information, and changing priorities.

• A bias toward shipping, learning, and improving rather than overengineering.

• Clear communication, low ego, intellectual honesty, and genuine respect for users.

We care more about what you have built and how you think than where you went to school.

HELPFUL EXPERIENCE

Experience in any of the following would be valuable but is not required:

• Marketplaces, logistics, supply chains, field operations, or workforce-management products.

• Food systems, restaurant technology, healthcare, Medicaid programs, government contracting, or nonprofit operations.

• BigQuery, HubSpot, geospatial products, mapping platforms, data visualization, or mobile-first web applications.

• Building a product or engineering function from an early stage.

• Working in privacy-sensitive or regulated environments.

HOW WE WORK

Rethink Food values inventiveness, vulnerability, thoughtfulness, and kindness. We expect this engineer to challenge assumptions, listen closely to users, acknowledge when something is not working, and build practical solutions with care.

This role is based in New York City because the best software for Rethink Food will be built by someone who sees the kitchen, meets the users, and understands the physical operation—not only the database