Founding Engineer

Commodity traders run large, risky businesses on email, Excel and legacy systems that record trades without doing anything with them.

Mercora is reinventing how physical traders run their business.

It is a full AI-native operating system: a system of record that does the work for you, not the other way around.

Software in this market is archaic, and we are building what's missing.

Why this role exists

The whole team is technical, and everyone writes code, including the CEO.

As Mercora moves from MVP to a complete product, the CEO's focus is starting to shift to go-to-market.

That's where you come in.

We need someone who fully owns product and engineering: someone who decides how the platform fits together, sets the standard, and builds it to scale.

• What you'll own
• - The technical vision and roadmap, and how the platform scales from a handful of customers to hundreds
• - Product and engineering: what gets built, in what order, and to what standard
• - The engineering team: how it works, how it ships, and who joins next
• - Security, reliability and data protection that trading firms and their IT teams trust
• - The technical voice with customers and partners

You'll still write code.

How Mercora works

These are the rules the team already works by

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Everyone ships, everyone talks to customers.

There are no layers between the person doing the work and the person using the product, and that includes this role.

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Think about the problem, not the ticket.

A ticket is a first guess. Work out what the customer needs, and change the plan when it is wrong.

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AI recommends, a human approves.

We build software where any decision can have a large financial impact, so nothing reaches a trade record, a broker or a bank without a person signing off.

Move fast at the edges, keep the core robust.

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Mercora does not overclaim to customers or investors, and the same holds inside the team.

"Done" means it works in production. If it doesn't, you fix it.

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No hierarchies, only responsibilities.

Everyone owns something end to end, and the person who owns it makes the call.

• Must-haves
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High agency.

You think problems through, push back when the plan is wrong, and work out what should actually be built.

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Strong product thinking.

You understand the user’s workflow before you design the system, you know what to build, what to cut and what to say no to, and you measure whether it worked.

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Commercial instinct.

You think about what moves the needle for customers, not just what's technically interesting.

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Ownership.

You've owned something bigger than your own code, and people want to build with you.

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A zero-to-one track record.

You have taken a product from idea to real users. Personal projects count.

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AI-native experience.

You have shipped AI products to real users, not just demos, and you know where models are reliable and where they are not.

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Clear communication.

You can explain technical decisions to a customer’s IT team as clearly as to the people who use the product every day.

• Nice-to-haves
• - Experience building B2B systems of record, such as ERP or fintech platforms
• - A background at a company like Palantir
• - Side projects with real traction: users, stars or downloads
• - Commodity trading or trade finance knowledge

No commodities experience is needed, but you learn a dense domain fast.

The team will teach you the domain, and you'll spend time with the traders and ops teams who use the product.

• Probably not for you if
• - You want a finished spec and a quiet roadmap
• - You'd rather manage people than build
• - You need a big team or a big budget around you
• What you get
• - Salary plus significant founding-team equity
• - Full technical autonomy. You pick the tools, you own the architecture
• - Fully remote
• - Direct work with the founding team and with the traders and ops teams who use the product every day
• Current stack

Type Script, Python and Postgres on AWS and Azure, with LLMs through AWS Bedrock. Where it goes next is your call.

• How Mercora hires
• - A deep dive into what you've built and led
• - A paid working session on a real problem
• - Time with the team
• - References, then an offer within two weeks
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