Forward Deployed Product Engineer (Builder)

SFR3 is a boutique real estate investment fund managing $2B+ of affordable single-family homes. The Fund renovated distressed homes, using software-driven operations to run many “tertiary” markets concurrently. Today we own 10K homes across 20 states, and will launch a second fund on the same rails.

You -------

Build First

Product-Minded

Operationally Sharp

Technically Fearless

You are a builder. Not in the abstract, motivational-poster sense — you actually ship things. Code, workflows, automations, products. You've done it in production, under pressure, with real users who needed it yesterday.

You sit at the intersection of engineering and product without fully belonging to either. You write backend code and you care whether it solves the right problem. You can read a messy operational workflow and immediately see the software underneath it. You move fast and make pragmatic calls, but you understand the difference between fast and reckless.

What drives you is the craft — building something that works, that people use, that actually moves the needle. You're the person who, when handed a messy real-world problem, immediately starts sketching the system that fixes it.

What You Will Do --------------------

You'll be paired directly with a business unit (Leasing, Field Ops, Utilities, Finance, etc.) and own the technical roadmap for that domain. You'll work alongside the business owner — not as a vendor, but as a co-builder.

Build & Ship

• Design and build backend systems, internal tools, and operational software that directly run the business
• Prototype fast, ship to real users, iterate based on what you see in the field — not what you assumed from a spec
• You are borderline AI psychosis, leveraging AI tooling, LLMs, and automation frameworks to accelerate development and build smarter systems
• Integrate third-party APIs and internal services to create seamless operational workflows

Understand the Business

• Embed in your business unit — go deep on how work actually gets done before building anything
• Translate messy operational reality into clean, scalable software architecture
• Identify the friction points and the high-leverage interventions, not just the feature requests
• Own the outcome, not just the output — track whether what you built actually worked

Drive Product Thinking

• Scope and prioritize the roadmap based on business impact, not engineering complexity
• Make pragmatic tradeoffs between shipping fast and building durably — and know which one this moment calls for
• Contribute to long-term technical vision across your domain without losing sight of this week's ship
• Bring data and user feedback into every decision — measure what matters

What We Are Looking For ---------------------------

Must-Haves

• Builder first. Strong engineering fundamentals
• You've shipped production software with real users and real stakes. Show us what you built.
• Proficiency in at least one modern backend language (Python, Go, Java, Ruby, etc.)
• Comfort with cloud infrastructure (AWS), databases (Postgres, Redis, DynamoDB), and APIs (REST, GraphQL)
• You think in systems — not just code, but the workflows, incentives, and failure modes around the code
• You can move from a vague problem to a working prototype without a detailed spec

Strong Signals

• Experience in a startup, operator, or BizOps environment — somewhere priorities changed fast and you shipped anyway
• Facility with data, SQL, and dashboarding — you can answer your own questions
• Exposure to no-code/low-code tooling (Zapier, Pipefy, n8n, etc.) — you know when to build vs. configure
• Experience with Apache Kafka, real-time streaming, or event-driven architectures
• AI-first instincts — you reach for LLMs, code-gen, and automation before reaching for headcount
• Entrepreneurial experience — you've had skin in the game before

You Don't Need To

• Have real estate experience — domain knowledge is learnable; builder instincts are not

Compensation ----------------

• Industry leading compensation & equity
• Fully Remote, Flexible PTO, Covered Health/Dental, 401k package, Macbook Pro, + more.

We are an ex-Uber team building the future of affordable housing at scale. Finding it hard to contain your excitement? Reach out!