Builder, Instructure Foundry

About the role

You are the Builder in a two-person pod within New Markets, a standalone division inside Instructure built to generate new revenue with AI-built products. You own whether what gets built actually holds up while the Founder owns the bet, and you stand behind the architectural integrity of the product the moment it ships. In an era where AI generates most of the code, you are the person who ensures it is right, fast enough for a pilot, and sound enough to scale without collapsing under real-world load. You will move fast with tight transparency, measuring success through revenue and outcomes rather than mere activity, and you will rely on a shared platform and operating team so you can stay focused on the product. This role demands hands-on ownership, rigorous judgment, and a relentless product mindset from day one.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Own the architectural integrity of the product from the ground up, ensuring every component meets production standards before it reaches a user.
• Take end-to-end responsibility for code quality, security, and scalability, especially across agentically generated code, while leveraging the shared harness to avoid rebuilding foundational plumbing.
• Build directly in Git using AI development tooling to move at pilot pace early and progressively harden the product as it approaches general availability.
• Direct and verify far more code than you hand-write, using smart review patterns to catch critical issues before anything ships to customers.
• Make clear, accountable decisions about what is safe to ship now and what requires deeper scrutiny, balancing speed with reliability.
• Write context back into the shared system so that the Founder and the operating team operate from a single source of truth instead of guesswork or misaligned assumptions.
• Partner closely with a non-technical Founder, acting as the technical translator between product intent and what the AI systems can realistically and safely deliver.
• Maintain fluency or rapidly developing fluency with AI-assisted development workflows, integrating new tools and patterns without sacrificing stability.
• Act as the primary guardian of security and scale, owning these concerns directly without a dedicated platform team as a backstop in production environments.
• Ensure the product delivers real value for customers by maintaining a strong product mindset that prioritizes usability, reliability, and measurable outcomes over theoretical perfection.
• Move quickly during the pilot phase while designing escape hatches and guardrails so the product does not fall over the moment it scales to broader usage.
• Surface risks and dependencies early, coordinating with the operating team so that trade-offs are visible and aligned with business objectives.
• Contribute to a culture of rigorous engineering craftsmanship by setting standards for how code is reviewed, tested, and deployed in AI-heavy workflows.
• Communicate progress, constraints, and shifts in direction with radical transparency so that stakeholders always understand the current state of the product.

Requirements

• You have proven experience shipping production software and owning its reliability, performance, and security in real-world, customer-facing environments.
• You possess senior engineering judgment that allows you to direct and verify high-volume AI output instead of writing every line of code by hand.
• You demonstrate fluency, or fast-developing fluency, with AI-assisted development tools, prompt design, and modern code generation workflows.
• You are comfortable taking full ownership of security, scalability, and operational stability without a platform team standing behind you as a safety net.
• You maintain a strong product mindset, caring deeply that the solution works for real customers and not only that it compiles or passes local tests.
• You instinctively move at pilot pace while designing for hardening, ensuring the product can scale without collapsing when usage grows unexpectedly.
• You understand how to balance speed and caution, making defensible calls about what can safely ship now and what must wait for deeper validation.
• You are willing to work under a token budget, aligning technical decisions with cost constraints and efficiency targets set by the business.

Nice to have

None specified.

Practical notes

This is a US-REMOTE role with full-time engagement. The position operates under a fast-paced, transparent environment where success is measured by revenue and customer impact rather than activity. New Markets is a standalone division within Instructure focused on AI-built products, and the role reports to a non-technical Founder in a two-person pod setup.