Founding Engineer

Buckstop Industries•Washington, DC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Buckstop's mission is to create a sustainable end-of-life for every electronic device on Earth. Our vision: measure the residual value of every real asset on the planet and become the intelligence standard for the circular economy. As an early engineering hire, you will report directly to the CTO and have a significant hand in defining, building, and scaling Buckstop's technical platform. This is not a feature-ticket role. You will influence architecture, own work end-to-end, and see the direct impact of what you build on customers and the planet. We are hiring across engineering disciplines. Whether your background is in software engineering, data engineering, or data science, the foundation is the same: product-minded builders who take ownership, prepare before they execute, and hold themselves to a high standard. "Ship fast, but prepare first. Small decisions get made and corrected quickly; big ones get a design doc. Surface issues immediately — silence causes cascading failures. The company values are not wall art; they are the operating system for how engineering decisions get made." — Buckstop Engineering Philosophy This posting covers three engineering tracks. Each shares a common foundation — ownership, quality, speed — with different areas of focus: Software Engineer: Build and operate the backend services, APIs, and frontend applications that power our appraisal platform. Own services end-to-end from design through production. Data Engineer: Design and build the data pipelines, models, and infrastructure that turn raw market signals into trusted, analytics-ready assets. Data quality is a first-class engineering concern here. Data Scientist / ML Engineer: Develop and productionize the models and analytical frameworks that drive solar asset appraisals. Bridge statistical rigor with real-world business outcomes.

Requirements

3–5+ years of professional experience in software engineering, data engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Strong programming skills in Python and/or a relevant language for your track — production-quality code, not just scripts.
Solid SQL fundamentals: complex queries, schema design, and performance intuition.
Experience shipping and operating systems in a cloud environment.
Must be legally authorized to work in the United States.
Visa sponsorship (e.g., H-1B) is not available for this role.

Nice To Haves

Software Engineering: Backend API development, async programming, relational database design, containerized deployments, CI/CD pipelines.
Data Engineering: ETL/ELT pipeline design, data modeling, data quality frameworks, orchestration tools, event-driven architectures.
Data Science / ML: Statistical modeling, ML model development and productionization, experimental design, applied analytics that inform real business decisions.
Infrastructure-as-code and security fundamentals (credentials management, access control) are a plus across all tracks.

Responsibilities

Architect and build — Design purpose-built systems with clear responsibilities.
Write production-quality code, participate in design reviews, and hold the bar on what ships.
Own your work end-to-end — From design through deployment and operation.
Define what "healthy" looks like and instrument it accordingly.
Champion quality — Quality gates exist because our customers make financial decisions on our outputs.
Raise the bar over time; challenge a process that slows us down without adding value.
Collaborate and iterate — Work directly with the CTO and product team to understand requirements.
Write design documents for consequential decisions; move fast on everything else.
Leverage AI tooling — We use AI aggressively to accelerate engineering work. You are responsible for every line that ships under your name, regardless of how it was generated.
Document constantly — Updating internal documentation is part of the definition of done. If you change how something works, write it down. Amnesia is the default state of a team; documentation is the cure.
Surface issues early — Say something as soon as you know something. Over-communicate. The cost of a cascading failure caused by silence is always higher than the cost of raising a flag early.