Jobs

Founding Engineer — Forefront
Vertical SaaS for manufacturer rep firms · Pre-seed
I’m Charlie, founder of Forefront. We’re building the operating system for manufacturer representative firms, starting in construction and building materials, where billions of dollars in commissions still move through spreadsheets, bad portals, and phone relays.
We are working with our first firm.They completed a paid pilot and are now on recurring monthly revenue. They use Forefront to process actual commission dollars: ingesting messy manufacturer files, attributing revenue to salespeople, and producing payout exports. Their field team also uses the product daily for live pricing and inventory lookup.
I am a marketing focused individual and I plan on leaning heavy into the GTM and onboarding process once the new engineer is comfortable with the software.
What you’ll own
You’ll be employee #1 on engineering and have genuine ownership over the technical direction of the company. There is no legacy engineering organization or predetermined architecture to work around. You’ll help decide what we build and how we build it.
The near-term work includes:
Turning a proven single-tenant product into a secure multi-tenant platform so we can onboard additional rep firms.
Hardening and extending our manufacturer data integrations. Many manufacturers do not provide practical APIs, so the current product uses authenticated browser automation and internal portal services to surface live pricing, inventory, account data, and order information.
Moving from SQLite to Postgres and building the production foundations: monitoring, audit logs, reliable deployments, and self-serve onboarding.
Deepening the commission engine with overpayment detection, email extraction, configurable rules, and workflows customers are already on the way.
Talking directly with customers and translating messy real-world operations into software that people rely on.
Stack
Python / FastAPI, React / Vite, Playwright, SQLite moving to Postgres, and Vercel. We also have a voice assistant built with Whisper, Claude, and TTS.
If you think we should make different technical choices, you will be able to make the case and lead the change.
You might be a fit if
You are a strong backend-oriented product engineer who has shipped and operated production systems.
You can independently scope, build, test, deploy, and debug.
You enjoy working close to the customer and turning ambiguity into practical software.
You want meaningful ownership.
You are comfortable working with customers whose workflows are messy, high-stakes, and not especially technical.
You are excited by building software for an essential industry that has been overlooked by modern technology.
Experience with browser automation, ETL and data pipelines, or B2B SaaS is a plus, but not a requirement.
Details
Compensation: $100k–$150k salary plus 3–10% equity, depending on experience, scope, and whether the role develops into a cofounder-level partnership. I’m happy to walk through the cap table and what the equity means in a conversation.
Location: Hybrid in the Silicon Valley area. We work together in person regularly.
Stage: Pre-seed
Process
A short intro call, followed by a paid work trial.
Interested?
Email Charlie at Charlie@getforefront.ai.
www.getforefront.ai