About the role:
Circlin is building a video-first, mobile-first secondhand marketplace designed to make buying and selling easier, safer, and more engaging.
We're looking for a Founding Backend Engineer to help build the systems at the core of the product. This is an early, high-ownership role. You’ll work closely with a small team and help shape how the marketplace handles orders, payouts, search, messaging, notifications, integrations, and the operational edge cases that matter in production.
Compensation:
This is a founding, equity-only role initially. There is no cash salary before fundraising. If we raise, we expect the role to transition to salary + equity, subject to financing and final agreement.
Location:
Europe-based preferred. Switzerland strongly preferred.
What you’ll work on:
- Design, build, and operate production backend services and workflows
- Own backend architecture decisions across APIs, workers, events, and external integrations
- Build resilient systems around payments, shipping, search, messaging, and marketplace workflows
- Define how we handle idempotency, retries, duplicate events, consistency, and payouts safely
- Help shape the engineering culture, quality bar, and long-term backend foundations of the company
You might be a fit if you:
- Have strong TypeScript / Node.js backend fundamentals
- Have built and operated production backend systems from scratch
- Have hands-on AWS & Azure experience in real-world systems
- Care deeply about correctness, edge cases, and production behavior
- Communicate clearly and make sound technical tradeoffs
- Want real ownership in an early-stage company
Especially relevant experience:
- Marketplace or e-commerce backends
- Event-driven systems
- Payment systems and webhooks
- Search infrastructure
- Recommendation, feed, or personalization systems
Why this role is interesting:
- Founding-level ownership
- Direct influence over architecture, engineering standards, and product velocity
- A chance to help define the company while it is still early