Founding Engineer
About the Role
This is the first engineering hire at an early-stage AI infrastructure startup that has a working product, live revenue, and a clear mandate: rebuild what works into agentic infrastructure that can serve a million users. You will work directly with the founder, owning architecture and technical direction with no engineering organisation above you, and the expectation is that this becomes a CTO seat as the team grows.
What You'll Do
Redesign and scale a working agentic system into production infrastructure capable of handling significant user load.
Design and operate the agent runtime, covering orchestration, memory, verification, and the reliability machinery that makes an AI workforce trustworthy.
Own work end to end across backend, infrastructure, frontend, and agent layers.
Set the technical stack, engineering bar, and team norms as the person who is defining them.
Ship to real business customers on a weekly cadence.
What We're Looking For
At least 2 years shipping production software, or an equivalent record of building and launching real systems as a founder or solo builder; strong younger engineers are explicitly in scope.
Demonstrated 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, including architecture, data modelling, runtime, and orchestration.
Track record of owning technical decisions with no engineering hierarchy above you, as a founder, early hire, or solo technical lead.
Founder instincts: ex-founders or co-founders are a strong signal.
Experience with agent orchestration, agent memory, evals, verification systems, or multi-agent workflows is a strong plus.
Familiarity with recruiting, agency, or service-delivery businesses is a bonus given the active verticals.
Strong CS fundamentals, whether from a university background or a well-regarded engineering environment, are a welcome signal but never a requirement.
Based in Europe and genuinely open to relocating to San Francisco within the first year.
Compensation & Benefits
Salary range: EUR 80,000 to EUR 140,000 annually. Equity is part of the package given the founding-hire nature of the role. Relocation support and US visa sponsorship are available from day one.
Location
Fully remote within Europe to start, with a planned relocation to San Francisco as the company establishes its US presence. Visa sponsorship and relocation assistance are provided.