Lead Full-Stack Engineer

Rethink Food•New York, NY

4d•$225,000 - $265,000•Onsite

About The Position

Rethink Food is a chef-led nonprofit building a more sustainable and equitable food system. We connect restaurants, community-based organizations, funders, government partners, healthcare organizations, and our own Sustainable Community Kitchen to provide high-quality meals while creating jobs and supporting local businesses. We are now building the technology layer that will connect this network, make our operations radically more efficient, and give every stakeholder—from a kitchen manager to a donor—a clear view of what is happening and why it matters. Rethink Food is seeking a Lead Full-Stack Engineer to serve as the hands-on technical builder at the center of this work. This is not an IT support position, a narrow feature-development role, or a job for someone who only manages other engineers. You will personally design, build, deploy, and operate products that support Rethink Food’s kitchens, restaurant network, community partners, funders, healthcare programs, government contracts, and internal teams. Your job is to turn a complicated, real-world food system into software that is remarkably simple to use. A frontline operator should be able to complete a task in seconds. A CEO or COO should be able to understand the business at a glance. You will work directly with Rethink Food’s leadership and teams across Operations, Programs, Finance, Development, and Communications. You will also help manage external technology partners and shape the future internal engineering team.

Requirements

At least seven years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent evidence of exceptional ability.
A record of personally taking meaningful products from an ambiguous problem through architecture, production launch, and ongoing operation.
Strong full-stack capability across modern frontend, backend, database, infrastructure, and integration work.
Deep proficiency with technologies such as TypeScript, React or Next.js, Node.js and/or Python, SQL, PostgreSQL, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and CI/CD.
Experience designing data models and integrating fragmented systems through APIs, webhooks, batch pipelines, and event-driven workflows.
Production experience with AI-enabled products, including LLM APIs, structured outputs, retrieval, tool use, evaluations, guardrails, and human review.
Strong product judgment and the ability to distinguish an essential workflow from an impressive but unnecessary feature.
Experience implementing authentication, permissions, audit trails, monitoring, testing, and secure handling of sensitive information.
The ability to work effectively with frontline operators, executives, designers, vendors, and nontechnical subject-matter experts.
Comfort operating with significant autonomy, imperfect information, and changing priorities.
A bias toward shipping, learning, and improving rather than overengineering.
Clear communication, low ego, intellectual honesty, and genuine respect for users.

Nice To Haves

Marketplaces, logistics, supply chains, field operations, or workforce-management products.
Food systems, restaurant technology, healthcare, Medicaid programs, government contracting, or nonprofit operations.
BigQuery, HubSpot, geospatial products, mapping platforms, data visualization, or mobile-first web applications.
Building a product or engineering function from an early stage.
Working in privacy-sensitive or regulated environments.

Responsibilities

Own products end-to-end: discovery, prioritization, user experience, architecture, implementation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
Spend time with kitchen staff, program teams, finance staff, restaurants, and community partners to understand how work actually happens.
Build polished interfaces, APIs, backend services, databases, integrations, and data pipelines.
Establish secure authentication, role-based permissions, auditability, testing, documentation, observability, backups, and production support practices.
Make disciplined build-versus-buy decisions and prevent unnecessary complexity.
Use modern AI development tools to increase velocity without compromising security, reliability, or engineering judgment.
Direct external engineers and vendors where appropriate while retaining ownership of the architecture and core product.
Translate technical decisions into plain language and communicate risks, tradeoffs, progress, and costs clearly to nontechnical leaders.
Help recruit and mentor additional engineers as Rethink Food’s technology function grows.