March 3, 2026
Engineering
Full-time
Lisbon
Senior Software Engineer (Applied AI) at Reach
About Reach
At Reach we're building building the operating system to help companies monitor and control their visibility in AI search. We combine our platform, custom AI agents, and the top 1% of hands-on experts in organic growth (SEO & AEO) to help companies show up when buyers are researching and comparing solutions on Google and inside AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, and turn that visibility into pipeline and revenue.
We reach ~$450k ARR in the first 6 months, basically bootstrapped, growing fast, and targeting $5M ARR by the end of 2026. We've been doing this for companies like ColdIQ ($7M ARR, #1 Clay worldwide sales agency), Indie Campers ($140M+ ARR), Carro, Fidelidade, Fraudio, Noxus and others.
A few recent results:
Helped ColdIQ influence $534k in ARR in a single month, with SEO and AI search becoming their #1 traffic source
Grew Indie Campers' organic revenue by 8.8% YoY and AI search revenue by 254% in 5 months
Got Carro recommended in competitive AI prompts like "best Mirakl alternative," consistently generating leads from AI recommendations.
You can learn more about the results we’ve been driving for our customers here.
We're turning services into software to disrupt the $100B+ SEO/AI Search market, which will get drastically bigger as search behavior shifts to AI and ad budgets follow.
"The global SEO and AEO services market will grow to $171 billion by 2030 from $81.4 billion last year" — Wall Street Journal
🤝 The team
We're a team of founders, AI engineers, and SEO & AEO specialists passionate about creating a category defining company that moves fast and has fun doing it.
You can learn more about the team here.
Our founders have already a proven track record of building and scaling fast growing tech companies.
Jose Velez (CEO), was the solo founder & CEO of Rely.io, an internal developer portal used by top engineering orgs like ESPN Bet and Feedzai, and have launched AI products that reached #1 Product of the Day and #1 AI Product of the month on Product Hunt. He raised $3.6M from top-tier firms like J12 Ventures, Shilling Capital Partners, TechstarsNYC, and TheVentureCity, as well as from notable angels.
Jose Pedro Nunes (CTO) has a track record of building and scaling world class engineering orgs. at high growth tech companies. He was the former VP of Engineering at Unbabel and Head of Engineering at BeReal and Sky.
Bernardo Ferreira, (founding AI search strategist), also led the strategy behind more than 250M organic visits and €100M in revenue attributed to SEO at Worten (think Iberian Amazon) in 2024.
📍 Location
We care deeply about building things together, in person.
The core team is in Lisbon, working out of our office with a focus on speed and collaboration. The best ideas happen at the whiteboard, not in a scheduled Zoom call.
The Opportunity: Why This Role?
You’ll be solving one of the most important problems in the market right now → Building the operating system for companies to monitor and control their presence in AI search and grow their business from that.
This is a chance to build a category-defining product from the ground up, with a clear signal from the market that they want this now → $440k ARR in 6 months fully bootstrapped from leading companies like Indie Campers, ColdIQ, Fidelidade, and more.
Be a part a small, elite, product-obsessed team. No bureaucracy, no middle management. Just shipping product.
Build the "brain" of the product. Your work will be the single biggest driver of the magic and value our customers experience.
Work on unsolved problems. Autonomous AI agents that execute complex, multi-step growth workflows across web scraping, content generation, SEO optimization, and community engagement. This is not a solved problem.
Ship to real customers, immediately. We have paying customers getting real results. Everything you build will be used and tested against real outcomes within days.
Define the technical trajectory. You'll make the core architectural decisions that determine what this company can become.
Life-changing equity. Founding-level stock option package with a company at the perfect inflection point.
Partner with a technical founder who has been through the 0-to-1 journey before and understands both the product and the engineering challenges.
Work closely with Jose (our co-founder and CTO), who’s got a track record of building and scaling world class engineering teams.
What You’ll Be Doing…
Systems Architecture & Backend
Design and build the core backend infrastructure: APIs, data pipelines, job orchestration, and the systems that keep our agents running reliably at scale.
Own the data layer: how we store, process, and serve SEO data, AI search results, customer knowledge bases, and agent outputs.
Build robust, observable systems. When an agent makes a decision, we need to understand why and how to make it better.
AI Agent Development
Design, build, and constantly improve the AI agents that perform SEO and AI search tasks autonomously.
Own the full AI pipeline: model evaluation, RAG systems, vector stores, LLM orchestration, and multi-agent coordination.
Translate deep domain knowledge from our in-house SEO experts into scalable, automated workflows.
Build feedback loops and evaluation frameworks that make the agents smarter over time.
Product & Quality
Be obsessed with the quality of AI output. Build tests, benchmarks, and monitoring to catch regressions and improve performance.
Work directly with customers to understand their pain and translate it into the right technical solutions.
Ship fast, iterate constantly, and maintain the quality bar that makes customers trust our system with their growth.
Signs You're a Great Fit
Building with LLMs is second nature. You know your way around evals, RAG, prompting, fine-tuning, and context engineering without needing a tutorial.
You don't need anyone to explain why evals are critical. You've built evaluation frameworks and know that without them, AI products are guessing.
Great product taste. You care deeply about the end-user experience, not just the backend architecture. You have opinions about how things should work, not just how they're built.
Astronomically high agency. You hate PM handholding. You see a problem, you figure out the right solution, and you ship it. You don't wait for a ticket.
Previously a founder (or you have the DNA of one). You've built things from scratch, taken ownership of outcomes, and made decisions under uncertainty.
You're a builder at heart, with a portfolio of impressive products you have personally built and shipped to real users.
You have strong experience designing and building backend systems in Python (FastAPI, or similar) and working with PostgreSQL at scale.
You understand distributed systems, job queues, and how to build infrastructure that doesn't fall over at 3am.
You have an insane learning velocity and genuine curiosity to become deeply knowledgeable in SEO and AI search.
Bonus points:
Experience with web scraping at scale (Scrapy, Playwright, headless browsers)
Experience with vector databases (Qdrant, Weaviate, Chroma, Pinecone)
Experience with Supabase, GCP, Kubernetes, or similar cloud infrastructure
Contributions to open-source AI/ML projects
This Isn't For Everyone (Our Culture is Demanding)
We're building something extraordinary, and that requires extraordinary commitment. We're not the right place for everyone. Before applying, ensure you're ready for:
High-Performance Environment: We move fast and expect exceptional results. If you prefer comfort over challenge, this isn't your place.
Passion-Driven Work: We're deeply passionate about our mission, which sometimes means flexible hours to deliver on our commitments.
Constant Evolution: Our technology, strategies, and processes will change frequently as we learn and grow. If you're not highly adaptable or don't enjoy constant learning, you'll struggle.
Direct & Honest Communication: We value candid, straightforward feedback. If you prefer politeness over absolute clarity, our culture might feel uncomfortable.
Tech Stack
We build our products using top-grade cloud-native technologies and services available on the market.
Frontend: React, TypeScript, Redux, Tailwind CSS, Storybook, LaunchDarkly, Auth0
Backend: Python (FastAPI), Supabase (PostgreSQL, Auth, Edge Functions, API layer)
AI Agents: Agno (framework for building Multi-Agent Systems), LiteLLM
Infrastructure and CI/CD: AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, Helm Charts, Github Actions
Observability & Analytics: Grafana, PostHog
👇 Noteworthy
*Our job titles may encompass various career levels, and the actual base pay for this position will be determined based on multiple factors including training, transferable skills, work experience, business requirements, and market conditions. Additionally, this role is eligible for equity and comprehensive benefits.”