{"id":2174362,"url":"https://alion.io/job/2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead","title":"Founding Engineering Lead","company":{"id":3871391,"name":"Sylvan Labs","domain":"sylvanlabs.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/sylvanlabs","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Management","role_family":"Management","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["New York, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":200000,"max":400000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":400000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"ServiceNow","optional":false},{"name":"World Models","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-18T01:05:16Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-18","last_verified_at":"2026-10-27T08:43:26Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":70,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":70},"description":"About Sylvan\nSylvan is building autonomous revenue teams.\nWe help B2B companies grow and protect revenue from their existing customers by identifying revenue-driving signals and deploying agents that act on them at the exact moment, across every account. We work with customers ranging from fast-growth startups to Fortune 500 enterprises like ServiceNow. Our ambition is to power the top-line of the economy.\nWe are guided by a core principle: no assholes, high mutual respect. We operate at high intensity, but with deep respect. Direct, honest, and no egos - just a shared obsession to win.\nWe’ve raised $10M+ from world-class investors and strategics including TQ Ventures and HubSpot Ventures. We are a fully in-office company based in New York City.\nWe will only hire A-players and are highly willing to go above-market in ownership, equity, and cash compensation. We want world-class builders who are excited by the opportunity to be part of a category-defining company at the earliest stage. It won’t be easy. We’re going to move fast. But, it’ll be fun.\nThe Role\nWe're looking for a Founding Engineering Lead who is both the commando shipping the first version of hard things and a strategist on some of the most interesting applied AI problems in enterprise software.\nYou'll own technical architecture end to end while sharing in the product roadmap and ML strategy alongside the founders - which means following the research closely enough to argue about what applies to a system acting on live revenue and what's still hand-waving.\nThe shape of the week changes. Call it 75% building and 25% leading over a year, but expect the mix to swing. You'll be leading a pod of three to four engineers, including their growth and performance, and you'll still be the one shipping.\nWhat You’ll Do\nTechnical lead on new initiatives, spearheading initial designs and builds vs. reviewing someone else’s.\n\nOwn the architecture behind our core platform. You make the build-versus-buy and infrastructure cost calls.\n\nSet the engineering bar for a team where agents write most of the code. Review standards, definition of done, release cadence, on-call.\n\nLead the pod. Sprint scope and sequencing, unblocking, growth and performance conversations, and hiring the engineers who come next.\n\nShape technical direction with our CTO. Product roadmap, ML approach, model strategy.\n\nWhat You’ll Bring\nYou work at the frontier of agent-driven development. You've built your own setup rather than living on the defaults, and you keep finding ways to get more out of agents than they give most people.\n\n5+ years of engineering experience, ideally including time as a technical founder, founding engineer, or staff IC who led a pod at a place with a high bar.\n\nYou were the primary author on something that shipped in the last six months, and owned delivery end-to-end with little oversight to catch your failures.\n\nYou've been accountable for other engineers' output as a tech lead, pod lead, or manager.\n\nApplied ML judgment, both classical (you know which technique fits which data, and you catch a bad validation design before anyone points at it) and frontier (informed opinions on transformers, world models, and can argue on ML applications)\n\nHigh tolerance for ambiguity, inherited code, and unglamorous work. Based in NYC, excited to be in-office.\n\nEqual Opportunity\nSylvan is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout the hiring process - please let us know if you need any.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3772,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["AI Agents","Marketing & Sales AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-09T13:31:50Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":16,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.559,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":70,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-27T05:46:45Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":400000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-27T11:45:22Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":13911,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-28T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3871391},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3871391"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2F2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2F2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2F2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2F2025-sylvan-labs-inc-founding-engineering-lead"}]}