About the Role
Build the infrastructure that enables AI agents to transact globally.
AI is changing how software is built. We believe it will fundamentally change how commerce works.Millions of AI agents will soon discover products, negotiate prices, make purchases, and manage financial workflows on behalf of consumers and businesses. Existing payments infrastructure wasn't designed for autonomous software.
Manif is building the infrastructure and control plane for agentic commerce—a neutral layer that enables AI agents to transact safely across payment providers, protocols, regions, and payment methods while ensuring consumers and merchants remain in control.
We are currently operating in stealth and are well funded by leading venture investors and strategic partners. With fundraising behind us, our full attention is on building the infrastructure that will power the next generation of global commerce.
The RoleAs one of our founding engineers, you'll help define both the architecture and the engineering culture of the company.
You'll build the platform that sits between AI agents, merchants, and payment providers:
• Agent runtimes and transaction APIs
• Merchant integrations and payment orchestration
• Customer dashboards and developer tools
• Security, tokenization, and payment infrastructure
• Distributed systems that operate reliably at global scale
You'll own systems end-to-end—from product and API design through implementation, testing, deployment, and operating production infrastructure.
QualificationsWe're optimizing for exceptional engineers rather than checking boxes, but successful candidates will typically have:
• A deep technical foundation in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or a related quantitative discipline, demonstrated through formal education or equivalent experience.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including algorithms, data structures, distributed systems, networking, databases, and systems design.
• Experience building and operating production services, with a strong understanding of reliability, security, performance, and observability.
• Fluency across the stack (we primarily use Node.js), with the ability to move comfortably between backend systems, APIs, databases, and customer-facing applications.
• Experience designing clean APIs, modeling data effectively, and building systems that handle correctness, idempotency, authentication, and multi-tenancy.
• An AI-native development workflow, including specification-driven development and effective use of AI coding agents as part of daily engineering practice.
You'll Probably Thrive Here If You...
• Already use AI as a core part of your engineering workflow—not as an experiment.
• Practice spec-driven development and are comfortable writing clear specifications that AI coding agents can execute.
• Have built and operated production systems and are comfortable working across the stack (we primarily use Node.js).
• Sweat the details that matter: correctness, security, idempotency, multi-tenancy, observability, and resilience.
• Care deeply about APIs, architecture, and developer experience.
• Enjoy ambiguity, have high agency, and take ownership.
• Can quickly learn unfamiliar protocols and systems, then build and ship with confidence.
Our Philosophy
Quality is our identity.We believe craftsmanship compounds. Every design decision, line of code, and interaction contributes to the long-term quality of the company.
Users above all.We build for meaningful user impact and measure ourselves by the value and trust we create.
High agency. Low ego.We make bold, informed decisions, communicate candidly, and change our minds quickly when the evidence changes.
Design creates leverage.Code is increasingly generative. Great systems are defined by thoughtful architecture, clear specifications, sound constraints, and strong engineering judgment.
AI-native by default.AI is embedded in how we think and build, with humans accountable for decisions and stewardship of outcomes.
If you're excited by the opportunity to help define both a new category of infrastructure and a new way of building software, we'd love to talk.
