Software Engineer

Job description

ABOUT BATON Baton equips business owners and buyers with a modern, data‑driven marketplace to buy or sell, offering valuations grounded in real financials and allowing them to close deals 2x faster than the industry norm. We recently https://finance.yahoo.com/news/baton-led-former-zillow-executive-174614569.html?guccounter=1 closed https://obvious.com/ideas/why-we-invested-in-baton/ our Series A to scale this vision further. We are proud to be building in person in New York City. WHY JOIN US - Rapid momentum — We’re gaining traction quickly & our valuation tools, off‑market listings, and streamlined closing processes are changing how small business deals happen at scale. - Ownership from day one — As a small, lean team, every hire carries outsized impact; from shaping product direction to building a culture of customer-first execution. - In-person energy & collaboration — Based in NYC, we foster a tight-knit, energetic team environment where voice matters and decisions move fast. - Mission with heart — We’re clearing the path for small business owners to take meaningful steps forward by providing them clarity, speed, and confidence when it matters most. - World-class investors & runway for impact — Backed by Obvious http://obvious.com, Giant Ventures http://giant.vc, Divergent https://www.divergenthq.com, Trust Fund https://www.trustfund.vc, Burst Capital https://burst.vc, Bloomberg Beta http://www.bloombergbeta.com, and others, our Series A sets a deliberate course for growth and meaningful scale. - Competitive compensation & perks — Expect market‑competitive pay, equity, fully-covered health benefit options, flexible time off, commuter perks, in-office snacks, and a true culture of low ego and high respect. THE BATON WAY AI has unlocked a step change in what’s possible in this market — and in how Baton operates. Our goal isn’t to bolt AI onto existing workflows or launch a chatbot; it’s to re-architect how the product works, how internal operations run, and how value compounds across the platform. Engineers here use AI as a force multiplier in their own work and in what they ship — and we take the craft of production AI seriously. How we build AI at Baton: We build agentic systems that handle real customer interactions and business workflows end-to-end. Expect to work across the full loop — from problem framing → data → evals → iteration → deployment → monitoring → continuous improvement; grounded in measurable outcomes (quality, latency, cost, reliability). We care about shipping quickly and building systems that hold up in the real world. We build in person in NYC because this work moves faster and gets better when the team is in the room together. We value low ego, high respect, direct communication, and real ownership. Why join us: Baton has real momentum — we’re gaining traction quickly, and our valuation tools, off-market listings, and streamlined closing process are changing how small business deals happen at scale. Because we’re still a small, lean team, every hire has outsized impact: you’ll help shape product direction, build core systems end-to-end, and raise the bar on customer-first execution. And the work has real meaning — when we do our job well, we give small business owners clarity, speed, and confidence at one of the most important financial and personal moments of their lives. ABOUT THE ROLE As a Software Engineer, you’ll work directly with our Head of Engineering and product team to build the agentic platform that powers how small businesses are bought and sold. Your work will directly impact how thousands of owners navigate one of the biggest financial moments of their lives. This is not a papers-and-prototypes role, it’s product engineering with real AI systems. You’ll ship full-stack agentic systems end-to-end, collaborate closely with sales and operations, and turn real business needs into agentic product experiences that users interact with daily. AI isn’t a separate track at Baton, it’s embedded into how product is conceived, built, shipped, and improved. If you’re the kind of engineer who wants to own the full loop — from “what problem matters?” to “it’s in prod and we’re monitoring it” — you’ll be at home here. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Ship full-stack AI features end to end — from scoping with stakeholders to deploying agentic systems that solve real problems for buyers and sellers - Own 0-to-1 projects, collaborating with our sales & operations teams to identify high-leverage opportunities and build intelligent capabilities - Build and improve agentic infrastructure that supports production-level inference, evaluation, and monitoring - Work across the stack to integrate AI seamlessly into our marketplace, creating clean interfaces that make intelligent features feel native to the product - Develop tools and systems that scale — from intelligent matching to document understanding and agentic workflows that transform our marketplace ABOUT YOU We're looking for someone who has: - Shipped and owned production AI systems end-to-end (LLM and/or classic ML) — real users, measurable outcomes, operational responsibility - Strong software engineering fundamentals with excellent Python skills and experience integrating foundation models in production - A track record of shipping — you’ve taken ambiguous problems from concept → production and can point to impact - Strong product sense — you can be your own product manager when needed, translating business needs into technical solutions without waiting for a spec - Comfort in ambiguity — you thrive with limited structure and turn uncertainty into clarity Nice to have: - Experience with modern AI frameworks and building multi-step agentic systems with tool use, planning, and human-in-the-loop patterns - Experience designing evaluation suites for LLM systems (offline + online), including rubric-based and model-graded evals - Experience operating LLM systems at scale—latency, cost, caching, fallbacks, rate limits, reliability - Familiarity with retrieval quality work—chunking, reranking, query rewriting, relevance tuning - Marketplace, platform, fintech, or small business background with understanding of matching algorithms or business transactions - Familiarity with Go, GraphQL, or React/TypeScript - Background in NLP, information retrieval, or recommendation systems You'll thrive here if you: - Want to apply AI to real business problems at real stakes and scale—not just build demos - Love small, high-trust teams with meaningful ownership over agents & capabilities that differentiate the product - Prefer shipping to production and measuring performance over endless tinkering - Are passionate about helping small business owners navigate one of the most significant moments in their journey - Can balance “good enough for now” with maintainable, scalable systems—pragmatic about simple solutions vs complex models - Embody low ego, high respect—direct, thoughtful communication; strong feedback muscle If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you — send a note with a few bullets on what you’ve shipped (especially production AI systems you’ve owned end-to-end), and what you’d be excited to build at Baton. WHY BATON - Mission-driven work: empowering entrepreneurs and shaping the future of small business transitions. - A collaborative, data-driven, and growth-oriented culture. - An opportunity to make a significant impact at an early stage in our journey. BENEFITS - Employer contribution for all healthcare options - 401k plan / short-term disability - Four weeks of paid time off, generous sick leave, and six weeks of flexible Work From Anywhere days - On-demand mental health support from Spill - Laptop of your choice - Parental leave program - The opportunity to make a meaningful impact on the lives of small business owners and their communities HELP US CREATE THE NEXT GREAT ASSET FOR EVERYONE - We believe that democratizing access to small business ownership with reliable data and tools for buying and selling businesses will reshape the economy. - At Baton, we’re building the AI-native platform that makes small business transitions transparent, fast, and fair as we support the millions of baby boomers who have poured their life into their small business. - We’re already the largest marketplace in the space with nearly 100 closed transactions & thousands of listings in front of tens of thousands of active buyers on the platform.