Vella is building the execution runtime for in home work — the software that orchestrates real-world household work today, on a roadmap toward human-and-robot hybrid execution. We operate in the Austin and DFW markets and recently raised on a $30M SAFE. We are a small, senior, AI-native team, and we are hiring a founding engineer to own broad surface area across our platform.
The Role
This is a generalist role for an engineer who is fluent across the stack and wants to work wherever the highest-leverage problem is — not someone who wants to be boxed into one layer. You will move fluidly between our provider mobile app (React Native / TypeScript), our backend services (Django / Python), our GraphQL API layer, and our internal tooling. You will work directly with the CTO across the roadmap, with real ownership from day one.
What You'll Work On
Representative near-term work from our roadmap:
- Backend services that make execution deterministic at scale — logistics and routing, automated team assignments, capacity and utilization, and the workflow engine that coordinates household work.
- Provider mobile (React Native / TypeScript): execution-evidence and image capture, provider workflow completion states, and the trace instrumentation that feeds our proprietary data loops.
- GraphQL APIs and shared services connecting mobile clients, web tooling, and backend systems — with correctness and reliability as first-class concerns.
- Internal web applications (TypeScript) used to run operations across our markets.
- Foundational data and instrumentation work underpinning our duration, assignment, and quality models.
What We're Looking For
- 5+ years building production software, with demonstrated breadth across both frontend/mobile and backend — you have shipped real features in more than one layer of the stack, not just claimed familiarity.
- Hands-on and at home in an early-stage environment — you are ready to build from day one in a small team, with the scrappiness to ship without scaffolding or process to lean on.
- Strong proficiency in both TypeScript and Python. React Native, Django, and GraphQL experience is a significant plus.
- Sound systems judgment: you reach for server-side correctness, think about reliability and failure modes, and can reason about where guarantees should live.
- High autonomy and comfort with ambiguity — you can take a loosely-defined problem and a thesis, not a ticket, and drive it to a shipped outcome.
- Clear communicator who can compress complex work for a technical or non-technical audience.
- AI-native: you use modern AI coding tools fluently and have the discipline to outsource the typing without outsourcing the judgment.
How We Work
We operate against a detailed, evolving product roadmap, and we move fast. We don't hand out tickets — we hand over problems. You'll own outcomes end to end.
We're looking for product builders who understand the business, not just the codebase. The engineers who thrive here question and pressure-test what's on the roadmap, push back when something is mis-scoped or low-leverage, and propose what
should be built — then go build it and come back with measured results.
"Measured results" is literal: we expect you to define what success looks like, instrument it, and report back on impact — not just ship and move on.
AI-native engineering: we lean heavily on AI tooling and expect fluency with it. But we are hiring for the engineering judgment AI can't replace — AI is the multiplier on a strong engineer, not a substitute for one.
