- backend-leaning
- real music passion (plays an instrument)
Songscription needs another strong engineer on the AI product to add support as the web app scales. This hire is a good backend-leaning engineer who is passionate about music but does not need to carry the product-taste spike themselves.
The non-negotiable cultural filter is a real passion for music: ideally they play an instrument and can read into music theory. Alex’s experience is that the strongest signal is a candidate who already built a music project somewhere along the way (a hackathon or a personal build), because it came out of genuine passion. It does not mean every project is music-related, just that it sits in that realm. The classic archetype is a strong engineer who has been doing backend work elsewhere, hits a point of “I would rather work on something aligned with my passion,” and comes over. A consumer background is a nice-to-have but not required, and a prior music company is not necessary.
The first 30 days are mostly maintenance: bug fixing and product improvements on a fast-growing web app. A few months in, they start contributing to the product itself, working alongside (not fully owning) the product engineer, so ownership is shared and leans more product over time while keeping the maintenance load covered. One trait Alex’s other engineer flagged, acknowledged as hard to filter for: they want someone experienced enough that they do not outsource all their thinking to an AI.
What You’ll Own
- Backend and infra support on the Songscription web product (hundreds of thousands of MAU, ~30% MoM growth)
- Bug fixing and product improvements in the first month, scaling into product contribution over the following months
- Shared product work alongside the existing product engineer, leaning more into product over time
- Keeping a fast-growing, high-traffic product stable and improving
Requirements
- Strong, genuinely good engineer, full-stack with a backend lean (backend-oriented prior work is a good signal)
- Roughly 2 to 3+ years of industry experience (new grads only if unusually strong internships or projects, which is less likely the fit here)
- Writes and reasons about code themselves; does not outsource all their thinking to an AI
- Can hit the ground running on maintenance and bug fixing in a live, high-traffic product
Who Will Thrive Here
- A strong backend-leaning engineer who is tired of work that does not connect to their passion and wants to build around music
- Someone who plays an instrument and naturally forms opinions about a music product, but is happy to let a teammate own the product vision
- A reliable builder who can carry maintenance on a fast-growing product and grow into product work
- Someone who genuinely thinks through their own engineering rather than leaning entirely on AI tools