Job Description

**Founding Engineer (Cloud & Full-Stack)**
Company: Bucket Labs, Inc. (Product: Mimir) Location: **Remote (US-Only)** or
San Diego, CA Compensation: $80k – $160k Salary + 0.0% – 10.0% Equity Type:
Full-time/Contract

The Mission
At Bucket Labs, we are building Mimir: the intelligent infrastructure for the
next generation of private AI. We are moving beyond simple "wrappers" around
hyperscaler APIs to build a secure, high-accuracy Retrieval-Augmented
Generation (RAG) system that enterprises can trust with their most sensitive
data with our next generation of Knowledge Management and Agentic AI.

We are looking for a Founding Engineer who refuses to choose between "DevOps"
and "Product." You will architect the cloud backbone that secures the data and
write the code that makes it usable.

If you want to own the stack from the React frontend down to the Terraform
modules—and can explain every line of code in between—this is your arena.

What You Will Build (The Hybrid Role)
You will own the full lifecycle of our product ecosystem. You aren't just
deploying; you are designing for resilience, cost-efficiency, and user
experience.

**1\. The Product (Full-Stack RAG)**

Core RAG Experience: Build the user-facing application (Next.js/React) and the
backend logic (Node/Python) that powers document upload, parsing, citation-
based chat, and shared workspaces.

Retrieval Engine: Implement and tune vector search (pgvector, Weaviate),
chunking strategies, and embedding models.

The Future Agents: Lay the groundwork for autonomous agents that will
eventually interact with email, CRMs, and internal tools.

**2\. The Infrastructure (Cloud Architecture)**

Multi-Cloud Orchestration: Architect and deploy cloud-native systems across
AWS (ECS, Lambda, Bedrock) and GCP (Cloud Run, GKE, Vertex AI).

Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Maintain strictly reproducible environments
using Terraform or CloudFormation.

* _Zero-Trust Security: *_ This is a private AI product. You will configure IAM, VPC networking, and KMS encryption to enforce airtight access control.

**Cost & Performance:** You will aggressively optimize costs by choosing open-
source components over expensive managed services where possible (e.g., self-
hosting OCR vs. Textract).

The Tech Stack
We don’t expect you to know everything day one, but strong overlap here is
required:

Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind.

Backend: Node.js and/or Python (FastAPI/Express).

Cloud & Ops: AWS, GCP, Docker, Kubernetes/ECS, Terraform, GitHub Actions.

Data: Postgres (pgvector/SQL), Redis, S3/Object Storage.

AI/ML: LangChain/LlamaIndex, Open-source OCR (Tesseract), Vector DBs.

Who You Are
You are a Builder, not just a Maintainer. You have 4+ years of experience and
have shipped significant features end-to-end, ideally in a startup
environment.

You value "Vibe Code." You write clean, testable code and can explain the
purpose of every function and configuration.

You are Cost-Conscious. You understand the trade-offs between "build vs. buy."
You get excited about replacing expensive APIs with efficient open-source
alternatives.

You think in Systems. You understand how a React component interacts with an
API gateway, how that hits the database, and how the VPC secures it all.

You want Ownership. You are looking for a seat at the table with the founders,
where your decisions on architecture and product direction matter immediately.

**Why Join Bucket Labs?**
We believe the future of AI is private, secure, and free from hallucinations.

Founding Team Seat: You wil become a core member of the founding team with
meaningful equity (up to 10%) and direct influence on the company's future.

Bleeding Edge Tech: Work with the latest in RAG, Agentic AI, Vector Search,
and local-first AI models.

Freedom to Execute: No bureaucracy. If you can justify the tech choice, we
will build it.

Remote + HQ: Work from anywhere in the US, with the option to join us in sunny
San Diego.

**Bonus: The "De-Clouding" & On-Prem Mindset**
We are actively moving toward self-sufficiency. While we currently use
hyperscalers, our roadmap includes repatriating data and building our own
compute infrastructure to maximize privacy and eliminate the "cloud tax."

You are a massive plus if you bring:

Bare Metal Experience: You’ve built systems outside of AWS/GCP (e.g.,
Colocation, dedicated servers, or heavy "Homelab" setups).

Virtualization Mastery: Experience managing Proxmox, KVM, or VMware in
production environments.

Hardware Knowledge: You understand the physical side of servers, networking,
and GPU clustering.

The "Exit Strategy": You have ideas on how to migrate workloads from managed
cloud services to self-hosted, open-source equivalents (e.g., self-hosting
LLMs or Vector DBs) without sacrificing reliability.

**How to Apply**
Share your GitHub, LinkedIn, or Portfolio with the subject line: "Founding
Engineer – I Build, Not Just Deploy"

Please include a short note answering these two questions:

Tell us about a RAG or search feature you owned end-to-end (stack used + what
you’re proud of).

Describe a time you avoided or replaced an expensive managed service (like
Textract or a proprietary vector store) with an open-source or self-hosted
alternative. What were the trade-offs?