Software Engineer - AI Driven Development

tldr; AI-driven development, $160k base, remote.

The problem we're solving

Custom software has always been out of reach for most businesses, especially if you wanted to keep the work onshore. So your options were cheap offshore dev shops where quality is a coin flip, off-the-shelf tools which never quite fit the way you do things, or more recently, vibe coding it yourself which mostly produces demos that fall over the moment a real user touches them.

But now there’s a new category: real engineers using AI coding tools. Real architectural decisions, data modeling, and system design. The code itself? Written by AI, virtually 100% of it.

One person or a small team of experienced engineers using Claude Code or Cursor properly can do in days what used to take months. That makes onshore custom software affordable for the kind of business that used to be priced out, without the reliability problems of vibe-coded output.

Most agencies have noticed this and done nothing about it, because passing the savings on isn't in their interest. We pass them on.

Some things we do differently

• AI-driven development. Engineers design the system, AI writes the code.
• Fixed rates only, no hourly billing. Hourly billing rewards taking longer, and we don't want our incentives pointing in the opposite direction to our clients'. We price against outcomes, and we stick to the price. 
• No overage games. Most "scope changes" are obvious things that should have been in the build anyway. If it's in the spirit of the scope, it goes in. We can do this because adding them isn't days or weeks of work, it's often one or two thoughtful prompts. We don't send a $4k change-order email because someone forgot to mention the password reset flow.
• 12 months of maintenance and bug fixes included after launch. Retainers after that run roughly 10x cheaper than agency rates. Most companies pay thousands of dollars in maintenance per month for absolutely nothing and it is insane. We do not do that.

What you'll do

• Gather requirements from clients.
• Write proposals (with our templates and AI).
• Accompany a client engagement manager to present proposals to clients.
• Build and ship products.

What you need to be good at

• AI-driven development. You are completely Claude Code/Cursor-pilled and AI writes ~99-100% of your code, to your spec.
• Writing great specs, making real engineering decisions across data models, system design, user experience.
• Shipping end-to-end. Ideally you've done this on your own projects.
• Building pragmatically fast. You should feel pretty comfortable shipping a basic web app in a day, ready to be iterated on.
• Using our templates and AI to create and present proposals. This will be lead by a client engagement manager, but you’ll be expected to communicate various aspects of the proposal to the client.
• Bonus if you're into Rails but not a dealbreaker.

You might not be a great fit if

• You think AI writes “poor quality code” or that “AI coding is a security problem”.
• You just can’t hand over control of the coding to AI and you still handcode a lot.
• You can write code but can't make architecture calls.
• You can’t talk directly to clients coherently and often.

Pay and setup

• $160k AUD base + bonus + super. 
• Fully remote, flexible hours. 
• Reports to the founder. 
• No sales targets, but client-facing throughout.

The application and interview process

1. Submit a resume, links to projects you’ve shipped, and your Github profile on this application or send to simon@launchassembly.com.au.
2. Initial phone screen.
3. 1 hour session where you’ll build a full web app. This should feel ambitious but doable.