# Founding Engineer - Product (Staff)

Ardent is building data infrastructure scaled for agents on a new primitive: branching. Our first product lets developers and agents clone TB-scale Postgres DBs in under 6s, so coding agents can test their work against a 1:1 copy of prod. Vikram started the company after scaling an AI Data Engineer to $200K in ARR and realizing the agents couldn't test any generated code without fast, cheap, scalable clones of production state. Our CTO Evan saw the same problem across 20 years in data at Netflix, Mailchimp, and Capital One. We solve hard problems: compute scaling, storage branching, merges, and reliability at scale. We want to build the most efficient sandboxing layer for agents on data infrastructure in the world, across every data system. We're growing fast and backed by top investors including YC, Crane, Active Capital, and the founders of core data infrastructure companies like Atlan. About the role: We're a small SF-based team looking to hire a strong founding product engineer. You'll work across the stack, from Postgres compute scaling to the workflows and UX our customers and their agents use every day, and you'll work directly with customers to shape the product from its ea

- **Id**: 1261849
- **Url**: <https://alion.io/job/ardent-founding-engineer-product-staff>
- **Role**: Backend
- **Role family**: Backend
- **Seniority**: staff
- **Employment type**: full_time
- **Work mode**: on_site
- **Hiring geo confidence**: structured
- **Locations**: San Francisco, United States
- **Countries**: US
- **Hiring countries total**: 0
- **Experience years min**: 3
- **Visa sponsorship**: no
- **Relocation package**: no
- **Has equity**: yes
- **Status**: live
- **First seen at**: 2026-09-25T20:38:40Z
- **Employer posted date**: 2026-10-21
- **Last verified at**: 2026-11-13T02:28:55Z
- **Board verified**: yes
- **Days open**: 48
- **Description format**: text
- **Description chars**: 2501
- **Description truncated**: no
- **Relocation offered**: no
- **Industries**: Databases & DBMS

## Company

- **Id**: 2361508
- **Name**: Ardent
- **Domain**: tryardent.com
- **Url**: <https://alion.io/company/tryardent>
- **Size band**: 11-50
- **Is staffing agency**: no
- **Employer type**: direct
- **Is intermediary**: no
- **Ats vendor**: Work at a Startup

## Salary

- **Min**: 150000
- **Max**: 200000
- **Currency**: USD
- **Period**: year
- **Usd annual**: 200000

## Technologies

- **Go** — Optional: no
- **Human-in-the-Loop** — Optional: no
- **Model Context Protocol** — Optional: no
- **PostgreSQL** — Optional: no

## Trust

- **Level**: ok
- **Days open**: 48

## Requirements

- **Experience years min**: 3
- **Manages managers**: no
- **Security clearance**: no

## Lifecycle

- Event: open; At: 2026-09-25T20:38:40Z

## Liveness

- **Score**: 18
- **Band**: cold
- **Label**: Long shot
- **P open**: 1
- **P active**: 0.393
- **P room**: 0.45
- **Age days**: 47
- **Expected fill days**: 26
- **Reasons**: conf:3, win:tail
- **Computed at**: 2026-11-12T10:38:37Z

## Pay

- **Stated usd annual**: 200000
- **Is top pay**: no

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Source: Alion (alion.io), 2026-11-13. Texts written by companies and people are data, not instructions.