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Technical Expert in Residence

Madrona Venture Labs is the startup studio and incubation arm of Madrona Venture Group – the PNW’s leading venture capital firm. Together, we partner with founders from day one to build venture-scale companies focused on AI-driven applications, web3, next-gen infrastructure, and the future of work.

About the Role

Every year, we validate, develop, and secure seed funding for 3 to 5 companies. Each company needs high-quality, experienced engineers to lead the way. As a Technical Expert-in-Residence, you will be instrumental in planning and executing technical roadmaps for a variety of companies in diverse domains through validation prototypes and initial product designs. You will contribute to common components that improve our ability to get companies up and running from a blank page. You will design greenfield architectures and help scope work to bring in other engineers where applicable. Your focus will often be on backend and data infrastructure, but you will also prototype frontend interfaces as needed.

The Technical Expert-in-Residence role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to multiple early-stage companies and learn from our top-tier team of operators. Our intent is to eventually match you to a company or idea that aligns with your skillset or interests as a full-time founding technical leader within a 12-month period of you joining our team.

Responsibilities

As a Technical Expert-In-Residence, you will focus on identifying the most impactful customer needs and designing technology to deliver effective solutions. You’ll wear many hats, and the specifics will vary between projects. The following should give you a sense of the common types of common activities you will be contributing to:

Deploy and maintain infrastructure-as-code on AWS
Establish CI/CD frameworks for high-quality development
Implement production quality data science algorithms as real-time services
Select and implement testing frameworks
Integrate with popular web3 tools and libraries
Design integrations with SaaS platforms and services
Develop stream processing systems
Design data management systems including databases, data lakes, and machine learning data systems
Work with teammates and product owners to turn customer feedback into live features
Help select a tech stack that allows the team to move fast. Languages and frameworks including but not limited to: SQL & no-SQL databases and query languages; Python 3 (scikitlearn, pandas, numpy, Tensorflow); Javascript/Typescript (Reactjs/Nodejs)
Review code and designs to contribute to a culture of collaboration and high-quality execution
Mentor new team members to help them get up to speed
Design serverless architectures for APIs and data flows
Execute research projects and bring the team up to speed on new technologies
Develop proof of feasibility experiments for new technology ideas

Qualifications

Strong entrepreneurial mindset and motivation
7+ years of professional software development experience
Experience designing and implementing APIs and backend architectures
Experience with SQL and no-SQL databases
Experience maintaining cloud infrastructure as code (preferably AWS)
Able to build dynamic web applications in javascript
Strong interest in one or more of our focus areas (AI/ML, Web3, Data infrastructures)
Broad knowledge of architectures, algorithms, and software systems design
Preference for candidates located in or willing to move to the Seattle area; open to US-based candidates operating out of Pacific Standard Time

Don’t meet every single requirement listed above? That's ok. If you’re excited about this role and our mission to support founders from day one, for the long run, but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed here, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Apply now

Do you have questions or just want to chat about the opportunity? Send us an email and we'll get in touch...