Founding AI Platform Engineer - Contract to Hire

We're looking for a senior engineer to help us build a data and AI-driven benchmarking platform from scratch. The system will collect data from field assessments (including photos, videos, and structured inputs), store it in a centralized database, and use AI to generate automated reports, insights, and benchmarking analytics. This includes: -Building a scalable backend and database -Developing APIs and integrations across systems -Implementing AI workflows (OpenAI / LLMs) for report generation -Creating dashboards and analytics for benchmarking -Automating workflows (CRM, follow-ups, reporting) We need someone who can design the architecture and execute the build end-to-end, not just complete isolated tasks. This is a long-term project (~6-10+ months) with potential for ongoing work.