Founding Engineer

TLDR;

• We're building the first AI-native finance platform for lending
• Backed by top-tier VCs and Banks (over $42M in funding across Seed & Series A)
• Strong demand - actively engaged with top tier lenders and banks in Australia who are waiting for the platform
• Looking for elite full-stack builders who thrive in fast-pace startups
• Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join a tight-knit all-star early team

What you'll build

• A modern SaaS platform with smart AI functionality, slick UX, and real automation that delivers on the AI promise
• Credit Decision Engines: systems that analyse loan applications with speed and accuracy, turning complex credit policies into executable code
• Financial Infrastructure: multi-tenant systems that handle sensitive financial data with reliability and security
• Document Processing Pipelines: intelligent extraction and structuring of data from unstructured documents using ML models
• Compliance Architecture: audit trails and reporting systems that meet strict ASIC requirements

How we work

• Ship end-to-end: You own the problem, not just a layer in the stack
• High autonomy: You'll have the context and trust to make big decisions
• Small team, high impact: No bureaucracy, just high-speed and high-quality shipping
• Speed first: We try things out instead of endless planning

Why join Slate

• Impact: Your code will directly reduce loan processing times from weeks to minutes, helping Australians access credit when they need it.
• Growth: As one of our first engineers, you'll have significant influence on technical direction and company culture. We offer a $2,000 annual learning budget and encourage and support presenting at fintech meetups/conferences.
• Culture: Small team, high autonomy, no bureaucracy. We ship end-to-end, value clarity and excellence, and build sustainable systems and sustainable careers.

Who we want

We're assembling a top-tier founding team and we're looking for the brightest engineers with startup experience and a founder mindset.

If you're looking for a comfortable job with well-defined tasks, this isn't it. If you want to build and ship at breakneck speed, own massive impact, and shape a world-class product from day one, let's talk.

Mindset & Approach

• Startup experience and founder mentality - you've built things from scratch, owned projects end-to-end, and think beyond code to the bigger picture
• Speed and autonomy - thrive in a high-velocity environment where ideas become shipped features quickly
• Curiosity and boldness - comfortable stepping outside your comfort zone, learning new domains, and talking to customers directly

Essential Experience

• 5+ years building production systems (fintech, payments, or other regulated industries ideal)
• Strong JVM expertise (Kotlin or Java) with deep Spring ecosystem knowledge, or deep experience working in other complex backend languages and can pick up language quickly
• Proven experience designing and operating distributed microservices architectures
• Database design with ACID/audit requirements and strong PostgreSQL knowledge
• Cloud-native development with containerisation and IaC (we use Google Cloud)
• Track record of building scalable, maintainable codebases for growing teams

Valuable Experience

• Event-driven architecture (Kafka or similar)
• AI/ML integration (document processing, NLP, LLM-based automation)
• RAG pipelines, embeddings, vector DBs, full-text search
• Realtime collaboration features (Websockets, YJS, tRPC)
• Custom UI component libraries / design systems
• DevOps experience with GCP, GitHub Actions, Cloud Run
• Excellent taste in product and UI design – You have a strong sense of what makes a great user experience and care about the details.

Compensation & benefits

• Total Compensation (Base + Bonus + Equity) : ~$260k p.a. based on experience
• $200/month allowance for technology and wellness
• $2,000 for learning and growth budget
• Flexible hybrid/remote working arrangements
• Top-tier equipment to support your productivity
• Location: Potts Point, Sydney (with flexible remote options)

How to apply

If you're excited about transforming the lending industry and building systems that matter, we'd love to hear from you.