General Backend Engineer (Volunteer)

Commitment: 10-15 hrs a week

About the Role

We’re seeking a Generalist Backend Engineer to help build the technical foundation of Kōkūn’s platform. You’ll work across our stack to connect data, intelligence, and community—developing backend systems that power personalized, evidence-based insights for people with invisible conditions.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys solving problems end-to-end. You’ll collaborate with a small, cross-functional team to design APIs, optimize data pipelines, and shape early AI-powered features. It’s an opportunity to contribute to technology that blends rigor with empathy—turning lived experience into knowledge that drives better care and understanding.

What You’ll Do

• Contribute to our FastAPI backend running on Railway
• Help manage and optimize our Supabase Postgres
• Support integrations with the OpenAI API, and eventually LangChain / LangGraph workflows
• Implement, test, and monitor RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) components
• Maintain and evolve the production cloud environment, including deployments, performance monitoring, and environment variables
• Collaborate with our React Native frontend team to ensure smooth data flow
• Improve observability and performance (logging, error tracking, LLM latency, etc.)
• Participate in GitHub-based CI/CD
• Occasionally help explore integrations like Discourse (for community features)

What We’re Looking For

• Proficiency in Python
• Experience with SQL / Postgres, and ideally Supabase
• Familiarity with LLM / RAG architectures, vector stores, or LangChain
• Comfort with cloud-hosted environments
• Working knowledge of RESTful APIs, authentication, and deployment workflows
• Comfortable navigating front-end interfaces (React/React Native) at a high level
• Strong problem-solving ability; thrives with autonomy and limited oversight
• Bonus: experience with community platforms (e.g. Discourse)Curiosity about AI, data, and social impact tech
• Collaborative and eager to contribute in an early-stage, mission-driven environment

What You’ll Gain

• Real-world experience developing and deploying production systems in a modern cloud environment
• Hands-on exposure to AI-powered architectures, including vector databases, RAG pipelines, and LangChain workflows
• A growing portfolio of backend projects demonstrating technical depth, creativity, and impact
• Mentorship, portfolio credit, and the satisfaction of using your engineering skills to help make invisible conditions visible