Founding Engineer

Location: San Francisco, CA - In Person

Compensation: $160,000-$180,000 base + meaningful early-stage equity

Employment: Full-Time

Experience: Early-career to ~4 years

Visa Sponsorship: Not available at this time

About the Opportunity

We're partnering with an early-stage AI startup building intelligent software for complex enterprise operations.

The company is developing an AI-native platform that combines sophisticated data infrastructure, enterprise integrations, automation, and autonomous agents to help organizations manage high-value, operationally critical workflows.

They are growing quickly and looking for a Founding Engineer to join the core team in San Francisco.

This is a highly hands-on role for an engineer who wants significant ownership at an early-stage company. You'll work directly with the founders, build across the stack, interact with customers, and help shape both the product and the engineering organization as the company grows.

What You'll Do

• Build and ship products across backend, frontend, data infrastructure, and deployment.
• Own features end-to-end, from understanding the problem through implementation, deployment, and iteration.
• Design scalable backend systems and data models for complex enterprise data.
• Build reliable AI agent workflows, evaluations, integrations, and guardrails.
• Integrate the platform with external enterprise systems and data sources.
• Work directly with customers to understand their workflows and translate business needs into technical solutions.
• Improve infrastructure, reliability, performance, and developer practices as the platform scales.
• Contribute directly to technical architecture and product decisions.
• Help establish the engineering standards and culture of a growing team.

What We're Looking For

• Strong full-stack engineering ability with a backend or systems-oriented foundation.
• Strong proficiency in at least one of Python, TypeScript, Java, or C++.
• Experience with modern backend technologies and databases such as PostgreSQL, FastAPI, Next.js, or comparable technologies.
• Solid understanding of backend architecture, databases, APIs, data systems, and cloud infrastructure.
• Experience deploying applications using AWS, Azure, GCP, or similar cloud environments.
• Ability to independently take a technical problem from concept to a near-production solution.
• Strong understanding of modern AI development, including LLMs, agents, tool use, AI workflows, evaluations, or ML infrastructure.
• Strong computer science fundamentals and technical problem-solving ability.
• High ownership and comfort operating in a fast-moving environment with limited structure.
• Good communication skills and willingness to work directly with customers.
• Interest in eventually taking on greater technical or team leadership responsibility.

Strong Plus

We're particularly interested in engineers who have demonstrated exceptional technical initiative outside of traditional assigned work.

That could include:

• Building your own startup, product, or technical project.
• Open-source contributions.
• Research or engineering projects built independently.
• Competitive programming, quantitative engineering, or other technically rigorous environments.
• Building products that have reached real users.
• Experience joining an early-stage startup and taking significant ownership.
• Strong product and design instincts in addition to backend engineering depth.