Senior Full‑Stack Engineer

About Us

Caralyst pairs students with therapists who truly fit their needs. We’re live at Washington University School of Medicine and gearing up to expand beyond med‑schools to any campus population that struggles to find mental‑health care.
Our platform is fully HIPAA‑compliant (private AWS VPC, Cognito auth) and runs smoothly today; feature requests are modest until the next customer lands. What we need is a seasoned engineer who can own the entire tech stack—infra and code—from React UI down to AWS IAM, keep it reliable, and help chart the next technical moves.
Our founder/CEO (Matt) is two years into an anesthesia residency and has a Stanford CS degree with prior experience doing software engineering at Meta and multiple startups (back in 2016-2018 though!). He handles product & sales nights‑and‑weekends, but can’t babysit prod. If you want impact without quitting your day job, read on.

‍

The Role

Time ≈ 5–20 hrs per month (some weeks zero, others much higher).
Path Demonstrate reliability, vision, and strong self‑management → CTO within 6‑12 months.
Chicago syncs preferred; we’ll comp economy train/coach fare if you’re St. Louis‑based or nearby.

‍

What You’ll Actually Do

• Own the stack end‑to‑end: React/Redux, Node/Express, Sequelize/MySQL, and AWS infra (Cognito, Lambda, VPC) built for HIPAA compliance.
• Review & merge AI‑assisted pull requests; coach quality and style.
• Be the insurance policy: jump in for the rare prod bug or outage (none so far; let’s keep it that way!).
• Scope & occasionally build light features (therapist availability, multi‑tenant rollout prep).
• Act as a technical sounding board: your ideas on roadmap, outreach, and spend are welcome—and expected.
• Optional: join technical portions of sales calls so we can confidently tell prospects, “Yes, we can build that.”

‍

Tech Snapshot

• Frontend: React.js + Redux
• Backend: Node.js / Express
• Database: MySQL (Sequelize)
• Infrastructure: AWS (Cognito, Lambda, S3, RDS, VPC)
• DevOps: GitHub Actions CI/CD
• Compliance: HIPAA; everything in a locked‑down VPC

‍

Must‑Haves

• 3-5+ yrs full‑stack dev experience (React + Node)
• Strong AWS DevOps background (VPCs, IAM/Cognito, deployments)
• Comfortable as the solo senior dev on a light but critical codebase
• Self‑directed and communicative—weekly async updates keep us aligned
• U.S. work authorization; willing to sign BAA

‍

Nice‑to‑Haves

• Prior high‑compliance / healthcare experience
• Serverless or multi‑tenant SaaS chops
• Enjoys AI‑coding tools & can wrangle them safely

‍

Why This Gig Rocks

• Low hour load, high leverage—get paid for availability and strategic brainpower.
• Clear upside: earn the CTO seat + double‑digit equity if we click.
• Influence: you’ll shape hiring, roadmap, even how we pitch future institutions.
• Feel‑good factor: every bug you squash helps students access therapy faster.

‍