Director of Engineering

Forum Ventures • Salt Lake City, UT

14d • $180,000 - $250,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Outlast is modernizing one of the largest markets in the world. The global recyclables industry represents a $1 trillion market that has historically operated with limited technology infrastructure. Outlast is building the digital platform that connects suppliers, buyers, and logistics into a unified ecosystem. Our platform enables market participants to transact materials seamlessly while providing integrated services including logistics coordination, financing, and quality control, creating a full-stack solution for the recyclables supply chain. In a short period of time, Outlast has secured some of the largest commercial contracts in the recyclables industry, validating both the scale of the opportunity and the strength of the platform we are building. The company is currently growing 3-4x year-over-year, a pace that exceeds traditional venture-backed benchmarks, while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital efficiency. Rather than relying on heavy capital burn, Outlast has focused on building a business with strong unit economics and operational leverage from the outset. As we continue to scale, our focus remains on building technology and systems that allow the business to grow rapidly while operating with increasing efficiency.

Requirements

• Enterprise Systems Depth: Has built systems where finance, operations, and commercial data intersect: inventory, reconciliation, ledgers, procurement and fulfillment workflows, pricing data. Can describe a system they built across these domains, how it scaled, and what it took to keep the data trustworthy as volume grew.
• AI and Agentic Systems in Production: Has personally shipped AI and agent-powered systems in production, not proofs of concept or demos. Understands LLM and agent architecture, evals, latency, and cost trade-offs.
• AI-Native Development Fluency: Builds primarily by orchestrating AI coding tools: architecting, prompting, reviewing, and shipping AI-written code. Can describe how AI changed how their team ships and how they keep AI-generated code correct and maintainable.
• Builds for Non-Technical Customers: Track record of building products that non-technical customers actually adopt. Integrates products into how customers already work, measuring success by effort removed and time saved.
• Early-Stage Operating Style: Has been the first or most senior engineering leader at a small company, comfortable doing the work without a platform, QA, or data team behind them. Ships working systems, owns data correctness as the business scales, and is honest about strengths and gaps.
• Based in or willing to relocate to Salt Lake City, working in person with the team.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with data warehousing and pipelines, accounting or ERP integration, or supply chain, industrial, and marketplace businesses is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Scale the Core Platform: Harden and extend the systems where finance, operations, and commercial data intersect: inventory, reconciliation, ledgers, procurement and fulfillment workflows, pricing data. Carry platform volume 4x year over year while keeping the data trustworthy. Identify where systems strain under volume and ship improvements, making the platform the single source of truth for the business.
• Move Operations onto the Platform and Automate It: Ship the internal tooling that trading, logistics, finance, and sales teams rely on every day, so the company scales volume without adding headcount. Replace manual spreadsheets with real platform capabilities, then automate them with agentic workflows that measurably remove human time or improve unit economics. Own AI observability and cost, including per-feature spend tracking and model selection trade-offs.
• Build Customer-Facing Products and Integrations: Build the products and integrations that embed Outlasts into how suppliers and buyers already operate. Decide per case whether an agentic flow or an embedded platform experience serves the customer best. Measure success by effort removed and time saved for the customer, not features shipped.
• Direct AI-Native Development: Architect, direct, and review AI-generated systems; AI writes most of the code at Outlast. Stand up the practices that keep AI-written code correct and maintainable: code review, evals for AI features, deploy discipline, and reliability. Set the standard for how a small team ships enterprise-grade systems with AI leverage.
• Lead and Level Up the Engineering Team: Lead a small, actively shipping engineering team as a player-coach, and grow it deliberately as the work demands. Establish the engineering operating system: delivery cadence, review practices, and reliability standards. Be the engineering partner the rest of the company relies on, translating the workflows operations, finance, and sales struggle with into shipped automation.

Benefits

• Opportunity to build the technology platform powering a $1T global market.
• Own engineering at a profitable, capital-efficient company growing 3-4x year-over-year.
• Build in a truly AI-native environment where AI writes most of the code and your leverage comes from directing it.
• Work directly with customers across the recyclables ecosystem and ship systems they use every day.
• Work directly with the CEO and shape how a global industry runs.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed