Forward Deployed Engineer

Job Description Company Description At Ressy.ai, we help restaurants, salons, dental clinics, and local businesses book more appointments, answer every call, and capture every lead with zero missed opportunities. Our platform ensures 24/7 availability, call handling, reservations, and provides transcripts, analytics, and CRM integration. We offer industry-leading affordable per-minute pricing. Our mission is to make every customer interaction seamless while saving businesses time and money. Role Description This is a full-time remote role for a Forward Deployed Engineer - Voice AI Platform. You'll be working directly with the founders to transform our prototype into a production system. This isn't just backend work; you'll architect the infrastructure, deploy with pilot restaurants, iterate based on real feedback, and set the technical foundation for the company. What Forward Deployed Means Here - Build production-ready backend infrastructure on AWS - Work directly with pilot restaurant partners during rollout - Debug issues in real-time as restaurants start taking AI-powered calls - Iterate rapidly based on actual usage patterns and customer feedback - Wear multiple hats: backend engineer, DevOps, solutions engineer What we're looking for Must-Haves - 4+ years building production backend systems - Strong Python (Flask/FastAPI) or Node.js/TypeScript experience - Solid AWS knowledge: Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, IAM - Experience with real-time systems (WebSockets, streaming) - API design skills (RESTful, authentication, rate limiting) - Ship-it mentality: prototype quickly, iterate based on feedback - Comfortable with ambiguity and moving fast Big Plusses - AWS Certification (Solutions Architect, Developer Associate, etc.) - Built systems handling high concurrency or real-time data - Worked with Twilio or telephony APIs - Experience with speech-to-text APIs (Deepgram, Google Speech, AWS Transcribe) - Background in NoSQL databases (DynamoDB access patterns) - Used Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CDK, CloudFormation) - Restaurant/food-tech/POS system experience - Early-stage startup experience Nice to have - Frontend skills (React/TypeScript) to collaborate with FE intern - Conversational AI or chatbot experience - Event-driven architecture (SNS, SQS, Step Functions) - DevOps/SRE background Our Expectations Technical Production quality: Build for reliability (error handling, retries, logging, monitoring) Move fast: Weekly deploys, rapid iteration based on pilot feedback Document as you go: Architecture decisions, API docs, runbooks Cost-conscious: Optimize for serverless, use AWS efficiently (we're bootstrapped) Collaboration Work closely with founders: Daily sync, transparent communication Support the interns: Light mentorship, code reviews Customer empathy: Understand restaurant pain points, gather feedback during pilots Be scrappy: Sometimes you'll debug on a call with a restaurant owner Mindset Ownership: This is your backend. You break it, you fix it. You build it, you deploy it. Bias to action: Better to ship and iterate than perfect in isolation Problem-solver: Not every challenge has a clear solutionfigure it out Long-term thinking: Build for today, architect for tomorrow Startup reality: Some days you're writing Lambda functions, other days you're on a Zoom helping a restaurant test their phone system Why Join Us Early team member: You'll shape the product, culture, and tech stack Real impact: Small restaurants compete with chains using our tech Cutting-edge: Build with voice AI, real-time streaming, conversational systems Ownership: This is your backend: full autonomy and responsibility Growth: As we scale, you grow into leadership (Staff Eng, CTO track) Learn by doing: AWS, AI, telephony, restaurant techmaster it all Compensation Salary: Competitive for early-stage startup (based on experience and location) Flexibility: Remote-friendly, async communication, results > hours