Aigentless — Senior Forward-Deployed Engineer
Type: Full-time | Hybrid (3 days/week in-office) | New York City, NY Compensation: $180K–$220K + competitive equity Hiring count: 1 Visa sponsorship: No — not open to any visas (US citizens / Green Card holders only) Reports to: Frank Lakatos, Head of Engineering
About Aigentless
Aigentless delivers a self-service, AI-powered apartment-leasing experience: prospective renters tour properties in person, unaccompanied, on their own schedule, while owners and operators save time and money on every lease. The product integrates with leading property management systems (Yardi, Entrata, RealPage), CRMs (Funnel, RentCafe, Salesforce), and access-control systems (digital or physical keys). Founded in late 2024, the company has already launched over 30,000 units across the US.
Founded: 2024 | Team size: 22 | Total funding: $2M Industry: Real Estate, AI, Enterprise Website: about.aigentless.com Office: New York City, NY
Why Candidates Should Join
- Real early traction: Founded late 2024 and already launched 30,000+ units across the US — strong customer and revenue growth in a massive market.
- Founders who lived the problem: The founding team has developed and operated over $1B of residential real estate and built the product to solve their own pain points.
- Outsized ownership: Small engineering team means high impact and ownership from day one, with no layers of bureaucracy.
- AI-native from the ground up: Not a legacy platform with AI bolted on — you'll help bring the codebase in-house and shape the technical foundation.
- Competitive comp: $180K–$220K base + equity.
Intake Call Summary
- Company: Self-guided apartment-tour platform, ~2 years old, currently seeing strong customer and revenue growth.
- Role: Senior forward-deployed / platform engineering role focused on integrations — backend engineering, data modeling, and API integrations.
- Requirements: 2–5 years in web applications and integrations; FastAPI and Python essential.
- Interview process: Initial culture/vibe screen, then technical deep dive, a 60-minute pairing session, and meetings with COO and CEO.
- Comp & logistics: $180K–$220K, limited flexibility; hybrid with 2–3 days in the NYC office.
- Timeline: Early in the process — one candidate in second round, several in first round.
- Ideal candidate: Self-starter with hands-on ownership of projects; comfortable in a startup, not a purely corporate background.
- Technical: FastAPI and Python required; backend + integrations experience preferred.
- Culture: Values work-life balance despite startup demands; team-oriented, adaptable, collaborative.
- Pain points: Needs to bring platform management in-house for scalability; existing codebase needs refactoring and performance work.
The Role
Own and build integrations with third-party property management systems at a fast-growing proptech startup. You'll be a hands-on engineer who learns complex systems quickly, works directly with customers on custom integration projects, and takes full ownership of the integration layer that powers the platform.
What You'll Be Doing
- Building and maintaining integrations with property management systems (Yardi, Entrata, RealPage, etc.) and custom bespoke client systems
- Joining customer calls to intake requirements for new integrations and translating them into technical solutions
- Designing and building zero-to-one integrations for enterprise customers with proprietary systems
- Collaborating closely with the platform engineer and broader product team to refactor and scale the system
Tech stack: Python, FastAPI, REST APIs
Qualifications
Seniority
- 2–5 years of experience as a backend software engineer [Required]
Work Experience
- Strong Python / FastAPI skills [Must have]
- Startup experience (Seed to Series A; <50 headcount) with hands-on ownership of technical work [Required]
- Built and maintained third-party API integrations [Required]
- Customer-facing engineering work [Required]
- PropTech or property management system experience (Yardi, Entrata, RealPage) [Strongly preferred]
Education
- BS in Computer Science or equivalent technical degree [Required]
Hard Skills
- Integration design experience — REST APIs, data modeling, webhooks [Required]
- Experience with agentic AI workflows or LLM tooling [Strongly preferred]
Miscellaneous
- Must be based in NYC — hybrid 3 days/week near Penn Station [Must have]
Traits to Avoid
- Solutions Architect, Solutions Engineer, or Product Manager who hasn't written production code recently
- Job hopping
- Only large corporate / Big Tech experience with no startup exposure
Role Details
- Salary: $180,000 – $220,000
- Equity: Competitive
- On-site policy: Hybrid — 3 days/week in-office near Penn Station, NYC
- Visa sponsorship: Not open to any visas (US citizens / Green Card holders only)
- Employment type: Full-time
- Location: New York City, NY
Screening Questions
- Describe your hands-on experience building and maintaining integrations with third-party APIs — what systems did you integrate with and what was your specific role in designing those solutions?
- Tell us about a time you took full ownership of a technical project at a small or fast-paced company without heavy oversight. What did you build start-to-finish and how did you handle ambiguity?
- Tell us about a time you owned a technical project end-to-end without heavy PM oversight — how did you scope the problem and ship the solution?
- Can the candidate be on-site? If not, is the candidate willing to relocate?
- What is their salary expectation?
- How actively is this candidate exploring new opportunities?
Interview Process
Stage 1 — Submit candidate After submission, the recruiter is notified if the hiring manager wants to proceed.
Stage 2 — Culture Screen with Madeleine Cullen (30 min) First-round screen focused on culture and vibe. Madeleine assesses personality fit and whether the candidate is someone the team wants to work shoulder to shoulder with in a small startup environment.
Stage 3 — Technical Deep Dive with Frank, Head of Engineering (60 min) Deeper dive into the candidate's experience, drilling into ownership of past work, system-design thinking, integrations experience, and engineering competency. Frank looks for demonstrated hands-on contributions rather than high-level corporate team accomplishments.
Stage 4 — Live Pairing Session with Engineering Team (60 min) Screen-share pairing session on a real-world challenge while engineers observe. Evaluates how the candidate works through problems in practice and collaborates. Other engineers are pulled in to assess team fit and working style.
Stage 5 — Chat with COO (30 min) Culture fit and experience discussion.
Stage 6 — Chat with CEO (30 min) Culture fit and experience discussion. Recruiter is auto-approved for all future roles with this client after this stage.
Stage 7 — Offer Extended
Stage 8 — Candidate Hired
Ideal Companies & Backgrounds
Updated Aug 2, 2026
Companies with Forward-Deployed Engineer or Software Engineer roles at tech startups Retool, Plaid, Stripe, Databricks, Figma, Notion, Vercel, Supabase, Temporal Technologies, EliseAI
Non-ideal companies (avoid sourcing from) Only Big Tech companies where work is highly specialized and siloed with heavy process overhead: Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, Cisco, Intel, VMware
Rejected Candidate Feedback
- SWE/backend focus is a must — prioritize candidates with proven Python/FastAPI integration projects over those with primarily data engineering or automation backgrounds.
- Customer-facing experience needs to be clearly demonstrated through end-to-end project ownership in startup environments.
- Startup culture fit is essential — ensure candidates show adaptability and direct problem-solving skills in ambiguous, hands-on settings.
- Recent rejection reasons on file: culture fit, candidate withdrew, skills mismatch, not enough experience, lack of relevant backend engineering experience.