About Arbol
Our mission is simple: Democratize Opportunity.
There are over 8 million low-income college students in the US, but only 2 out of every 10 graduates. Failure to meet their basic needs while attending classes and the lack of community support are the top drivers for the low graduation rate. Arbol aspires to improve the graduation rate by providing student’s the financial and community support that they need.
What we’re building:
For Students.
Arbol is building software to support low-income, first-generation college students. We:
• Remove financial burden of college students
• Provide a support system for students’ during college and beyond
• Teach financial intelligence to those who need it the most
For Supporters.
Arbol is building software to provide a better giving experience for supporters. We:
• Provide proof of impact and transparency into where their money is going
• Allow supporters to give their time, talent, and network to the students of their choice
• Give supporters a one-to-one connection with the student
Why Arbol?
• We dream big. Our long-term vision is to become an all-in-one solution that provides banking services, financial education, and social network to change the future of education
• We believe in striving students who don’t have the same opportunities and resources as their peers
• We want to make a more equitable world where students of all backgrounds can succeed
• We are a team of mission driven and motivated first-generation graduates who deeply understand the problem at hand
• Get into a pre-seed startup from the beginning and have meaningful product ownership and input
• Own significant equity in a high growth startup
• Backed by multiple local Western New York colleges, organizations, and affinity groups
Who you are:
You will be our first engineer and tasked with making decisions about Arbol’s technology stack and direction. You should be a strategic thinker, an effective communicator, and an expert in technological development. Your past roles were in startup environments, and you’ve managed people before. This is not a pure strategy or leadership role – we are an early company, and everyone is an “individual contributor” as well. Be ready to build! This role has a great deal of growth potential. As a first engineer on the team, you’ll be empowered to shape our software architecture, finding innovative solutions to complex problems, talking to customers, and incorporating their feedback, and growing into a leadership role as part of your career progression. “Founding engineer” is a fuzzy term, and for us it covers a range. If your aspirations are to become VP Engineering or a CTO, we’d like to help you get there. If you’d rather be a heads down building product for the foreseeable future, great. But either way, the latter will be your focus in the near term. Skill-wise, here’s what we’re looking for:
• The job is remote but being local to Buffalo, NY is a big plus
• 5+ years of experience in a full stack engineering role, prior experience in a fintech startup is a big plus
• At least bachelor’s degree in software engineering, computer science, or related field
• You enjoy owning features end-to-end and are comfortable moving across the stack to do so
• Co-manage new products from designs to prototypes, specifications, and then to live deployments during private and public betas.
• You take pride in your craft and enjoy building high quality software, but also believe that “done is better than perfect” and have good intuition around which corners are okay to cut and which aren’t.
• You’re a clear and concise communicator; you enjoy the challenge of explaining complicated ideas in simple terms, both in-person and in writing – especially to non-developers.
• You are always willing to roll up your sleeves and pitch in when the team needs help.
• Capable of weighing tradeoffs between robustness and speed
• Able to set ambitious goals and timelines for yourself and then follow through
• Ability to work independently
• It can move fast in a startup! Ability to have fun and take breaks when needed
What you’ll do:
Build the next version of Arbol: v1 is a no-code solution built on Bubble, Discord, and Stripe.
• Define our near-term and long-term technical roadmap. We will look to you for guidance on our technology stack and approach.
• Write quality, clean, and secure code. You will be responsible for building and maintaining a well-architected product.
• Work closely with the founding team on product decisions and strategy. We expect a point of view and a collaborative partner who is interested in finding creative solutions
• Be part of hiring and building an engineering team to execute on the vision we’ve developed together.
• Understand customers to figure out what we should be building and how we should build it
• Working with the founding team to translate business requirements into engineering tasks
• Manage our technical budget through decision making on different contractors or different vendors (for example, BAAS providers or other fintech API providers) that meet the needs of our users and allow us to launch workable prototypes more quickly.
Application & Interview process
• Submit your application and resume on, including samples from your portfolio, and a few sentences on why you’re interested in this opportunity through email at arbol@growarbol.com and favio@growarbol.com
• Applicants that progress to live interviews will meet with our co-founders. This session will be focused on product thinking, communication, collaboration, and stage and values alignment.
Compensation
The founders recently closed a pre-seed round and anticipate closing their seed round in Q1 2023 Until the round is closed, the position will be part-time.
• Trial Compensation: Equity
• During Pre-Seed: Part-time contract
• Upon Seed Funding: Negotiated salary
