{"id":864531,"url":"https://alion.io/job/hypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend","title":"Founding Software Engineer - Backend","company":{"id":680976,"name":"Hyper Cubic","domain":"hypercubic.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/hypercubic","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":125000,"max":300000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":300000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":true,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"COBOL","optional":false},{"name":"HPC","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-05-26T18:58:05Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-03","last_verified_at":"2026-11-07T00:26:03Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":164,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":1,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":163},"description":"About Hypercubic\nAt Hypercubic, we’re building AI systems that can understand, reason about, and rearchitect large-scale legacy applications running on mainframes and COBOL. We work at the intersection of program analysis, knowledge extraction, and agentic systems, applied to some of the most critical enterprise software in the world (banks, insurance, airlines, government, and more).\nWe’re a small, deeply technical team in San Francisco, backed by top investors, and working with some of the largest organizations in the world.\nLearn why we're excited about mainframe modernization.\nAbout the Role\nWe’re looking for a backend engineer with unusually strong engineering and design taste. You will work directly with the CTO to design, prototype, and productionize AI-powered systems from first principles. This is a founding role with meaningful ownership over architecture, product direction, and engineering culture. It is suited for someone with strong fundamentals and comfortable operating across abstraction layers, from low-level system reasoning to high-level interactions.\nWhat You’ll Do\nRapidly prototype new concepts and features to validate ideas before full implementation.\n\nShip AI-driven features end to end, from model interaction to user-facing workflows.\n\nSet early engineering standards around testing, reliability, and code quality.\n\nTranslate ambiguous problem statements into concrete experiments, constraints, and working systems.\n\nLead architecture decisions and long-term technical direction with the CTO.\n\nCollaborate with a highly diverse group of subject matter experts and customers from various industries (banks, insurance, airlines, and more).\n\nYou are a Fit if…\nYou care deeply about your work and the product.\n\nYou are comfortable with uncertainty and enjoy figuring out what to build before how to build it.\n\nYou have built complex agentic products or infrastructure.\n\nYou think in systems and feedback loops, not just features.\n\nYou can move fast and slow. Prototyping ideas in hours, then building enterprise-grade features to a high-quality bar.\n\nYou want to become world-class at AI engineering.\n\nYou have a bias for action and a track record of working in fast-paced environments with urgency.\n\nNice to Have\nStrong testing intuition, including TDD and property-based testing.\n\nExperience building and maintaining production-grade agentic or autonomous systems.\n\nExposure to legacy systems (especially mainframes or COBOL), compilers, program analysis techniques, or high-performance computing (HPC).\n\nFamiliarity with enterprise software constraints.\n\nLogistics\nLocation: This role is in-person based in San Francisco, California.\n\nBenefits: Hypercubic offers generous health, dental, and vision benefits, PTO, and relocation support as needed.\n\nSponsorship: Unfortunately, we are unable to sponsor new H1B employment visas at this time. However, we can support H1B transfers and OPT.\n\nLogistics\nLocation: This role is in-person 5 days a week based in San Francisco, California near FiDi.\n\nSponsorship: Unfortunately, we are unable to sponsor new H1B employment visas at this time.\n\nBenefits\nWe offer the following benefits for our full-time employees:\nFounding-team level equity,\n\nMedical, Dental, and Vision benefits for you and your family\n\nLife Insurance benefits\n\nRetirement Plan (e.g., 401K)\n\nMonthly stipend to support your wellness and commute\n\nDaily lunches/dinners and snacks in the office to fuel you\n\nGenerous PTO and sick day policy to rest and recharge","description_format":"text","description_chars":3510,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["401k plan","Equity","Life insurance","Retirement plans"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Custom Software Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-13T12:29:21Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-22T19:00:30Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-11-03T01:33:42Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":6,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.204,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":163,"expected_fill_days":35,"reasons":["conf:3","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":300000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/hypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/hypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-07T02:01:35Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4859,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-08T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":680976},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=680976"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fhypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fhypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fhypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/hypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fhypercubic-founding-software-engineer-backend"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":864531}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"hypercubic.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":864531},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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