Founding Engineer
About the Role
This is the first engineering hire at a solo-founded, freshly funded AI startup building the infrastructure layer for AI-native service businesses. You will work directly with the founder to turn a working agentic product into infrastructure that can hold real scale. This is a first-hire, high-ownership role with a clear path to a CTO seat as the team grows.
What You'll Do
Rebuild a working product into agentic infrastructure designed to scale to a large user base.
Design and operate the agent runtime, covering orchestration, memory, verification, and the machinery that makes an AI workforce reliable.
Own the full technical surface: backend, infrastructure, frontend, and agents.
Set the technical stack, engineering bar, and the way the team builds, as the person establishing those standards.
Ship to production on a weekly cadence for real businesses running on the platform today.
What We're Looking For
At least 2 years shipping production software, or an equivalent track record building and shipping real systems as a founder or solo builder.
Hands-on experience building and running LLM or AI agent systems in production, with real users depending on them, not demos or side projects.
Full-stack range: able to take work from backend and infrastructure through to the UI without waiting for a specialist.
Proven ability to turn a working prototype into infrastructure that holds real load, covering architecture, data modelling, runtime, and orchestration.
Experience owning technical decisions without an engineering organisation above you, as a founder, early hire, or solo technical lead.
Founder instincts: prior experience founding or co-founding a company is a strong signal.
Familiarity with agent orchestration, agent memory, evals, verification systems, or multi-agent workflows is a plus.
Strong CS fundamentals, whether from a university background or time at a well-regarded engineering organisation, are a positive signal but never a gate.
Based in Europe and open to relocating to San Francisco within the first year.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary: EUR 90,000 to EUR 140,000 annually. Equity is on the table given the founding-team nature of the role. Relocation support and US visa sponsorship are provided from day one.
Location
Fully remote within Europe to start. Relocation to San Francisco is expected within the first year, with visa sponsorship and relocation assistance provided.