Founding Engineer for Shinka

Founding Engineer

Starting at €90,000 + Equity | Dublin | Hybrid – 3 days onsite

Essential: Know our current stack, which includes Go, TypeScript, React, Kubernetes/GKE, ArgoCD, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Redis, BigQuery and Kafka. This is essential for your role, if you are not familiar with this and don't know how to use them, we don't recommend applying.

What’s in it for you?

• Ownership: Take ideas from concept through to production, owning features across design, development, deployment and iteration.
• Influence: Work directly with the founder and help shape the product, architecture and engineering culture.
• Product: Turn a powerful but technically configured AdTech platform into an intuitive, AI-assisted, self-service product.
• Scale: Build on infrastructure processing billions of advertising requests every day.
• AI-native engineering: Use tools such as Claude Code as a genuine part of the development process, not as an occasional add-on.
• Equity: Share in the upside of an early-stage company entering its next phase of growth.

The Opportunity:

You’ll be joining a growing AdTech company helping advertisers connect with publishers across Connected TV and Digital Out-of-Home advertising. Today, parts of the platform are configured using raw JSON. The company wants to develop a more intuitive, AI-assisted and self-service experience that allows customers to configure the platform, manage integrations and understand their reporting more easily.

As Founding Engineer, you’ll take a leading role in making that happen. This is a senior individual-contributor position rather than a people-management role. You’ll work directly with the founder, collaborate with an experienced engineering team and have autonomy over how products and features are designed and delivered.

The Role:

• You’ll own meaningful areas of the product from end to end; understanding the problem, designing the solution, shipping it into production and improving it based on real customer feedback.
• You’ll help build the configuration and reporting experiences used by publishers, introduce
• AI-assisted and self-service functionality, and extend the platform’s integrations with demand and supply partners.
• You’ll also have direct exposure to customers. That could involve understanding how they use the platform, supporting a technical integration or translating a recurring customer problem into a better product decision.
• Beyond the code itself, you’ll help establish the technical standards and working practices of growing Dublin engineering team. The company is deliberately building an AI-native engineering culture, so agentic development tools such as Claude Code will be central to how you work.

You’ll be responsible for:

• Owning features from initial idea through to production and ongoing iteration.
• Turning product direction into reliable software used by real customers.
• Developing the platform’s configuration, reporting and self-service experiences.
• Building AI-assisted workflows that simplify technically complex processes.
• Extending integrations with advertising demand and supply partners.
• Working directly with customers and publishers on product and integration challenges.
• Contributing to architecture and wider technical decisions.
• Helping establish engineering standards and culture as the Dublin team grows.
• Championing AI-assisted and agentic development practices.

You’ll be a good fit if you:

Know our current stack, which includes Go, TypeScript, React, Kubernetes/GKE, ArgoCD, Google Cloud, PostgreSQL, Redis, BigQuery and Kafka. This is essential for your role, if you are not familiar with this and know how to use them, we don't recommend applying.

• Have a strong track record of shipping production software.
• Enjoy owning problems rather than working from fully defined tickets.
• Think about why a feature is being built and how it affects the person using it.
• Can begin with a clear problem and an incomplete specification.
• Are comfortable making technical decisions and explaining the reasoning behind them.
• Understand the considerations involved in high-throughput, low-latency systems.
• Already use AI coding tools seriously and can demonstrate how they improve your development process.
• Want to remain hands-on while having genuine influence over product and technical
• direction.

Experience in an early-stage startup or with distributed, high-volume systems, AdTech knowledge, including programmatic advertising, RTB, OpenRTB, Prebid or VAST, is a bonus,

Pay: From €90,000.00 per year

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Dublin, County Dublin: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)

Work authorisation:

• Ireland (required)

Location:

• Dublin, County Dublin (required)

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Dublin, County Dublin