Founding Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Nov 7, 2026. First seen by Alion on Aug 28, 2026.
What is Crouton?
Crouton builds software that helps companies understand how their people are actually deployed: who works where, how teams are structured, and how people are staffed across projects over time.
We’re already working with a small set of high-caliber companies across defense, robotics, and healthcare. These teams use Crouton to answer questions like “do we have capacity for this?” or “what happens if we reorganize this team?” in a way that’s fast and grounded in reality.
Why I’m building it
I’m building Crouton because I saw how quickly clarity breaks down as a company grows. At my last company, even with incredibly strong people, it became hard to answer basic questions about who was working on what and how teams were actually structured.
The result is slower decisions and a lot of guesswork. I don’t think that should be the case. Companies should be able to understand how their people are deployed as clearly as they understand their financials.
About the role
We’re looking for a Founding Engineer who wants real ownership.
You’ll build product directly in the hands of users, talk to customers regularly, and help define how the system actually works as we go. A lot of what we’re building doesn’t have obvious answers yet: things like how to represent people across systems, how teams evolve over time, and how planning should feel when it’s done well.
You’ll work closely with the founder and the people using the product day to day. The team is small, expectations are high, and there’s a lot of trust. If you like figuring things out, moving quickly, and having your work matter immediately, this will feel like a good place to be.
About the tech you’ll work on
A lot of the work is figuring out how to represent a constantly changing organization. Crouton combines data from different systems, reconciling inconsistencies, and makes it possible to reason about changes over time. You’ll help define how these pieces fit together and what the right abstractions should be.
Qualifications we look for
- Computer Science degree or equivalent experience
- Experience working as a professional software engineer on real production systems
- Comfort working across the stack (frontend, backend, infrastructure)
- You’ve operated in environments where you were expected to figure things out, not just implement specs
- Strong emotional intelligence and good judgment