Founding Engineer - Geospatial Navigation

Company Description Jaunt – Experience Navigation is an early-stage technology company building a new category of navigation for smart glasses.

Jaunt goes beyond turn-by-turn directions by bringing stories, local context and discovery directly into the route, helping people experience the world around them while continuing to move toward their destination.

The product is currently being beta-tested through a mobile application while the team builds Jaunt natively for audio and display-based smart glasses as its primary launch platform.

Jaunt combines geospatial intelligence, AI-powered content, voice interfaces and wearable experiences to create navigation that feels more contextual, intuitive and engaging.

As an early member of the engineering team, you will join a small, mission-driven group shaping the product and its technical foundations from the ground up. The company values strong product judgment, rapid iteration, engineering ownership and the ability to turn complex technical problems into reliable user experiences.

Role Description As a Founding Engineer for AI, Navigation & Smart Glasses, you will lead the design and development of core navigation algorithms, wearable device integrations, and AI-powered experiences. You will work closely with product and design teams to translate user needs into robust, scalable systems, including computer vision pipelines, sensor fusion, and real-time decision engines. Day-to-day, you will architect and implement backend and edge components, write production-quality code, evaluate and integrate ML models, and optimize performance on constrained hardware. You will also set engineering best practices, mentor junior teammates, and help shape the technical roadmap and infrastructure. This is a full-time hybrid role based in Chennai, with a mix of in-office collaboration and work-from-home flexibility.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience building and scaling 0-to-1 systems, including taking products or platforms from early architecture and prototyping through production deployment, user adoption, and continued growth
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial ownership of production systems
• Strong experience in at least one core area: Python backend engineering or mobile application development
• Experience designing, building, and maintaining backend services using Python; FastAPI experience is preferred
• Experience with PostgreSQL, API design, data modelling, and distributed application architecture
• Experience with Flutter, native mobile development, or another modern application framework
• Practical experience deploying and operating applications using AWS or another major cloud platform
• Ability to work across multiple parts of the technology stack and own features from concept to production
• Strong understanding of software architecture, reliability, performance, and production observability
• Comfort operating autonomously in an early-stage startup environment
• Ability to prioritize effectively, make practical technical trade-offs, and move quickly without compromising engineering quality
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to work across product, design, and engineering
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Experience

Experience in any of the following areas would be valuable, but is not mandatory:

• Navigation, mapping, geospatial systems, or location-aware applications
• PostGIS, H3, Mapbox, route geometry, or proximity-based triggers
• LLM applications, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows, or AI evaluation systems
• Text-to-speech, speech recognition, voice interfaces, or audio applications
• Smart glasses, AR, XR, wearables, or spatial-computing platforms
• Flutter BLoC or Cubit
• TypeScript, React, Next.js, or Vite
• Redis or Valkey
• OpenTelemetry or production monitoring systems
• Docker, automated deployment pipelines, or infrastructure as code
• Go or other high-performance backend languages
• Experience working as an early engineer in a startup
• Experience designing hands-free, accessible, or context-aware user experiences