Backend Engineer - Supabase Lite

About the Role

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. It exists because AI builders and platform partners need a database they can give to every prototype without the cost or the wait: sub-second provisioning, a footprint small enough to run inside a sandbox, and an upgrade path to full Supabase when an app graduates to production.

This is a role with a lot of agency. Small team, working product, patterns still to be set - you'll own large areas end to end and make real decisions from day one.

What You'll Be Responsible For

• 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.

You Might Be a Good Fit If You

• 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.