Founding Engineer
About the Role
You'll be the second engineering hire at an early-stage B2B SaaS startup building AI agents for the industrial ingredient manufacturing industry, a sector worth hundreds of billions of dollars that underpins the global food supply. Working directly alongside the founding team, you'll have broad ownership across the full stack and a direct hand in every major product decision the company makes.
What You'll Do
Build backend systems that ingest and process messy real-world documents from customer ERPs and inboxes, including large-scale PDF pipelines.
Develop LLM-powered agents that complete complex, multi-page compliance and food safety documents end to end.
Own features across the entire stack, from backend services through to the UI, picking up whatever the company needs next.
Ship fast and iterate directly on real user feedback rather than prolonged architecture debate.
What We're Looking For
A track record of shipping products or major features that real users actively used, with the ability to articulate tradeoffs and lessons learned.
Full-stack range: comfortable taking a feature from backend service through to the UI without waiting for a specialist.
Production experience with LLM-powered features or agents (not just prototypes or demos), ideally integrating multiple model providers.
Strong backend engineering skills: services that ingest and process unstructured real-world data, plus solid relational schema design (Postgres or equivalent).
Experience with or ability to ramp quickly on Kotlin and Spring Boot, React and Next.js, and cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure).
Document processing, PDF parsing, or unstructured data extraction experience is a strong plus.
Early-stage startup or founding engineer experience, or a demonstrated appetite for the ambiguity and ownership that comes with it.
Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco, this role is fully on-site five days a week.
No degree or years-of-experience requirement; what you have built and how you think matters most.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $200,000 to $300,000 annually. Equity: 0.5% to 2%. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site, five days a week in San Francisco, California, United States.