Founding Platform Engineer

Location:

Toronto, Ontario

Our client is building an AI-native operating layer for modern enterprises — a platform that blends deterministic execution with governed, production-grade AI. They’re early‑stage, already shipping core technology, and have proven the concept with a working compiler, runtime, and reference implementations. The foundation is real. What’s next is scale.

This is not a “blank page” startup. The hard ideas are already working. The challenge now is turning a powerful prototype into an industrial‑grade system that can run the most demanding business workloads.

As a Founding Platform Engineer, you’ll design and build the next generation of the company’s core runtime in Rust. This layer is responsible for executing business logic, managing entity life cycles, and enforcing correctness at enterprise scale.

You’ll own the system’s performance envelope, its execution model, and the evolution path from an existing managed‑language implementation to a zero‑GC, sub‑millisecond Rust runtime. Your work will determine whether the platform can meet the throughput, latency, and reliability requirements of mission‑critical enterprise systems.

This is deep infrastructure work with real stakes: correctness, determinism, and performance under load are non‑negotiable.

• Runtime architecture & performance:
  Design and implement a Rust runtime that delivers deterministic behaviour with predictable, enterprise‑grade performance.
• Execution model:
  Rebuild and optimize a hierarchical state‑machine engine that governs entity behaviour, transitions, guards, and side effects.
• High‑performance querying:
  Create a query layer capable of traversing large graphs of business entities with consistent, low‑latency results.

• Learn the existing runtime, entity model, and state semantics.
• Design a Rust‑based architecture with clean boundaries for migration.
• Implement core lifecycle primitives with rigorous, property‑based testing.
• Establish benchmarks and performance baselines across critical paths.

• Deliver a production‑ready Rust runtime with full execution, persistence, and query support.
• Reach sub‑millisecond p99 latency for entity transitions under realistic load.
• Build tooling that allows legacy and Rust components to coexist during migration.
• Define and enforce correctness in variants across runtime boundaries.

• Build the core:
  You’re not adding features to the edge of a product. You’re defining the engine everything else runs on.
• Real technical depth:
  Deterministic execution, distributed persistence, state machines, and performance s is serious systems engineering.
• Founding impact:
  Shape architecture, culture, and direction from day one, with equity that reflects your role in building the company.

• Salary:
  Competitive, based on experience.
• Equity:
  Meaningful early‑team package.
• Benefits:
  Health, dental, vision (Canada).
• Location:
  
  Hybrid in Toronto (2–3 days/week in office).

• 5+ years building production systems in a systems language (Rust, C++, or
  
  C).
• Hands‑on experience with Rust, and an interest in its implementation.
• Solid distributed systems fundamentals (consistency, failure modes, replication).
• Proven ability to optimize systems at a low level (profiling, memory layout, cache behaviour).
• Experience and comfort working in ambiguous, fast‑paced and innovation‑driven environments.

• Strong Rust fluency: ownership model, async ecosystems (ex. Tokio), and unsafe boundaries.
• Experience with C# / .NET.
• Background in compilers, interpreters, or language runtimes.
• Experience with state machines, workflow engines, or similar execution models in production.
• Exposure to enterprise platforms (ERP, CRM, workflow engines).
• Open‑source contributions in systems or infrastructure projects.