Supalite Engineer

Job description

About this role

Supabase is the Postgres development platform, built by developers for developers. We provide a complete backend solution including Database, Auth, Storage, Edge Functions, Realtime, and Vector Search. All services are deeply integrated and designed for growth. We're looking for engineers to join the team building Supabase Lite, a lightweight, TypeScript-native implementation of Supabase. It runs interchangeably on SQLite and Postgres and ships a PostgREST and Auth compatible API, so applications written against @supabase/supabase-js work as-is.

Responsibilities

• Grow API compatibility with the Supabase client, keeping behavior faithful to hosted Supabase and backed by conformance tests
• Bring more of the Supabase stack to SQLite
• Build and harden the path for upgrading a project from Supabase Lite to full Supabase
• Own the developer experience end to end: the CLI, local tooling, and docs
• Build and harden the hosted offering on a scale-to-zero, near-zero-cost footing, kept loosely coupled so the implementation can be swapped without a rewrite
• Work directly with design partners and turn real-world migration and integration friction into a sharper product
• Engage with the open-source community and contribute back to the broader Supabase stack.

Qualifications and requirements

• Have substantial backend or full-stack experience with strong fluency in TypeScript, and have built or contributed to a backend system, framework, or developer platform before
• Are a strong generalist, comfortable moving across the stack from API design to storage internals to infrastructure, and picking up whatever the problem needs
• Read unfamiliar code without friction. A lot of the work means studying reference implementations in other languages, such as GoTrue in Go and PostgREST in Haskell, and matching their behavior in TypeScript
• Have a solid grounding in SQL and relational databases, and the curiosity to dig into where Postgres and SQLite differ
• Have a bias toward compatibility and correctness, and reach for tests and specs to prove behavior
• Think around corners. When everyone reaches for the standard playbook, you look for the simpler path that fits a smaller box — breaking a complex system down to the 20% that covers 80% of the need, then making it run somewhere far smaller than it was designed for
• Care about developer experience: clean APIs, fast feedback loops, and tooling that makes the right thing the easy thing
• Are comfortable owning ambiguous, early-stage work and making sound calls that inform and define the spec. This is a founding role on a brand-new team
• Are comfortable working in public repositories on a remote, async team
• Communicate clearly in writing
• Bonus: experience with the Supabase stack, building developer CLIs, or a track record of open-source maintenance.