Founding Product Engineer - Venture Platform & Infrastructure

About The Studio

Utopia Studio is an AI-native venture builder for the Global South, backed by Qatar Development Bank. We work with domain experts across the GCC, Southeast Asia, and Africa to accelerate venture creation through AI-driven execution and shared infrastructure.

At the core is Utopia OS — a modular platform that automates what's repeatable, embeds AI agents across workflows, and lets learning compound across ventures.

About the Role

We're looking for a founding product engineer to build the platform and infrastructure side of Utopia OS. You’ll design, develop, and scale the shared systems, data pipelines, and full-stack applications that power dozens of AI-native ventures launching from Doha for the Global South.

You’ll combine deep backend expertise with the ability to deliver seamless, data-driven web experiences that make AI-native venture building faster and smarter.

You will work as part of a product trio with the Design Lead and the Rapid Prototyping Engineer, making joint decisions on discovery, scope, and technical approach.

Reports to: Studio Director
Growth path: Head of AI Platform / CTO track

Responsibilities

Platform Engineering & Infrastructure

• Architect, build, and maintain Utopia OS infrastructure: auth, data systems, deployment, monitoring, analytics

• Develop full-stack web apps and plugins for studio-wide decisioning and analytics

• Build and maintain data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and deployment across all ventures

• Develop and maintain robust backend systems and APIs, integrating modern databases (Postgres, Supabase, PlanetScale) and data architectures (Iceberg, Delta Lake).

• Implement data pipelines and transformation workflows (Dagster, Airflow) to enable real-time analytics across ventures.

• Create clear, reusable documentation and internal tooling to standardize engineering practices across the platform.

• Take early-stage products and harden them for scale, reliability, and compliance.

• Collaborate with design and product teams to translate data and infrastructure capabilities into intuitive user experiences and venture-facing tools.

• Implement CI/CD, observability, and security frameworks across the portfolio

• Design deployment templates for multi-tenant environments and enterprise integrations

Collaboration & Engineering Excellence

• Work closely with venture teams to integrate AI workflows and shared infrastructure

• Improve developer experience through modern, intuitive tool design

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to engineers and fellows — fostering a culture of learning, experimentation, and shared standards across the Studio.

• Document architecture, standards, and playbooks so they can be reused across the studio

• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both engineering and non-technical stakeholders — turning systems thinking into shared understanding.

• Stay current with advances in generative AI, data infrastructure, and modern web engineering

• Work in a tight loop with the Design Lead on design system needs and with the Rapid Prototyping Engineer to productionize validated prototypes into secure, scalable services.

• Co-own technical discovery with the product trio: define evaluation plans, success metrics, and risks before committing to builds.

• You’ll also help the team build shared capabilities typically owned by dedicated functions — like LLMOps, Data Engineering, and Security — but in a lean, integrated way.

• That means establishing lightweight evaluation pipelines, data ingestion templates, and security practices that can scale across multiple ventures without extra overhead.

• These foundations will later evolve into formalized systems as Utopia grows.

• We operate as a compact, AI-native core team — covering product, design, and engineering end-to-end.

• Each of us contributes to early foundations in areas like evaluation, data, research, and security, ensuring the platform scales responsibly without added layers or headcount.

Experience & Skills

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field

• 4–8 years in full-stack and backend development (startup or AI context preferred)

• Strong with modern frameworks (React, Vue, Angular, Next.js, SvelteKit) and backend systems (Postgres, Supabase, PlanetScale)

• Experience with data pipelines (Dagster, Airflow) and modern data lakes (Iceberg, Delta Lake)

• Experience designing data-driven applications — integrating analytics and visualization into user-facing tools.

• Comfortable with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines

• Strong documentation and communication skills — you can explain complex systems clearly

Technical Foundations

• Strong in full-stack development, with expertise in at least one modern front-end framework (React, Svelte, Vue, Angular, or Next.js)

• Experienced with backend systems, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure (Postgres, Supabase, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes)

• Comfortable developing and deploying in hybrid environments, with CI/CD, monitoring, and observability best practices

• Familiar with data lake architectures (Delta Lake, Iceberg) and workflow orchestration tools (Airflow, Dagster)

Impact & Success Metrics

• Accelerate venture build cycles through reusable systems and faster deployment

• Improve infrastructure reliability and security across ventures

• Reduce duplication and increase code reuse across the Studio platform

• Enable measurable improvements in venture launch speed, uptime, and developer experience

Mindset & Values

• Systems + Empathy: You balance deep backend expertise with product intuition and user empathy.

• AI as collaborator: You build infrastructure that learns, adapts, and improves through automation and AI augmentation.

• Outcome focus: You optimize for speed, reliability, and measurable business value across all ventures.

• Continuous learning: You're always exploring new frameworks, architectures, and AI tools that make engineering smarter and more efficient.

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What You Can Expect

• Meaningful Impact: Your work directly contributes to building the core infrastructure behind a new generation of ventures - enabling equitable, AI-native innovation across the Global South.

• Collaborative Culture: We thrive on openness, curiosity, and collective intelligence. Everyone has a voice, and decisions are made transparently.

• Growth Mindset: From AI learning and use budgets to mentorship, we invest in your development and help you grow beyond your comfort zone.

• Competitive Rewards: Tax-free compensation, private health and travel insurance, and a benefits package designed for both security and flexibility.

• Wellbeing First: Generous PTO, flexible hybrid setup, and wellness programs to help you stay balanced.

• Work-Life Integration: Office lunches twice a week, great snacks, and team meetups that keep energy and connection high.

• Global Exposure: Occasional travel across Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East for meaningful, on-ground collaboration with venture teams.

• Inclusive by Design: We celebrate diversity and are committed to building an environment where everyone belongs.

Why This Role Matters

You'll be building the operating system for AI-native venture creation — the foundation that founders across the Global South will use to build the next generation of companies.

Your work will power Utopia OS and enable innovation aligned with Qatar's Vision 2030 for a digital, knowledge-based economy.

Your work will accelerate venture build time and reduce technical duplication across the Studio — measurable through faster deployment cycles, improved reliability, and reusable systems.

Who This Role Isn’t Right For

If you prefer working in rigid environments, or need fully defined specs before shipping, this may not be the right fit.

We move fast, operate with high trust, and expect engineers to take ownership from architecture through to production.

The Utopia Platform Advantage

The Studio is part of Utopia Capital’s integrated venture platform designed to solve the biggest friction points in emerging market venture creation.

Most founders face a broken journey: they struggle to build with limited resources, chase capital across disconnected investors, and lack the infrastructure to scale across regions. We've built a different system.

The Studio co-builds ventures with domain experts using AI-native infrastructure, compressing the path from concept to product. The Radical Fund and A-typical Ventures provide fast, aligned capital from pre-seed through Series A, removing fundraising friction at every stage. And Utopia OS — our shared technical backbone — gives every venture access to the same tools, data systems, and regional networks that would normally take years and millions to build.

This means founders can focus on solving real problems while we handle the build infrastructure, capital coordination, and cross-regional expansion. It's a compounding system: each venture we build makes the next one faster, smarter, and more capital-efficient. That's the platform advantage that you will be part of and contribute to, purpose-built for the complexity of the Global South.

We believe innovation should be inclusive and globally distributed. Our team is built on openness, curiosity, and collaboration — with people from across the GCC, Africa, and Southeast Asia working together to build meaningful ventures.

All roles are based in Doha, Qatar, with flexible hybrid options and global travel opportunities (unless otherwise stated). We welcome talent from every background to join us in shaping the future of AI-native innovation.