Founding Engineer
About the Role
This is a founding engineering role at an early-stage AI startup building systems that accelerate hardware engineering workflows for defense and medical device companies. You will partner directly with the CTO to own all technical execution, from architecture through production delivery, setting the engineering standard for every hire that follows.
What You'll Do
Design and build the core architecture that integrates AI agents with CAD, CAE, and PLM tools, while meeting the security requirements of defense and medical customers.
Own end-to-end engineering delivery including design decisions, reliability, observability, evaluation suites, regression testing, and on-call operations.
Ship production AI workflows into live customer programs that practicing engineers rely on daily.
Build evaluation and training loops that improve the system from simulation runs, test data, engineer corrections, and field outcomes, including reinforcement learning grounded in real physics.
Sit alongside engineers at partner companies, identify where the system fails against real deadlines, and translate those learnings into platform capabilities.
Contribute to the roadmap and execute on it quickly inside real engineering programs.
Expand the platform across multiple operating companies, driving measurable cycle-time reduction, while building and mentoring a small engineering team.
What We're Looking For
4 or more years shipping software to production, including systems that real customers depended on daily.
Proven track record putting AI in production: shipped LLM agent workflows that call real tools, handle failure gracefully, and are held to rigorous evaluation suites.
Strong Python and backend or ML systems engineering skills, with sound judgment on when to use retrieval, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, or plain software.
Experience at a high-growth technology company with strong engineering standards.
Strong CS fundamentals, ideally from a rigorous academic background.
Excellent communication and ability to earn trust with experienced domain engineers on the shop floor.
Experience in frontier or applied AI, industrial software, simulation, CAD/CAE/EDA, or physical-world AI is a strong plus.
Prior exposure to reinforcement learning or fine-tuning in production systems is a plus.
Low ego, high standards, and comfortable traveling regularly to partner engineering sites.
Must be authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.
Compensation and Benefits
Base salary: $150,000 to $220,000 USD annually. Equity is available as part of the total package. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
Location
This is a full-time, on-site role based in New York City, NY. Regular travel to partner engineering companies is expected.