Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA (Hybrid)
Full-time

About Our Client

Our client is a highly prestigious, well-funded AI startup built by proven operators with a track record of scaling complex systems and real businesses. The company is attacking problems most organizations avoid—because they are hard, ambiguous, and consequential.

This is not incremental software. This is foundational work.

Backed by top-tier venture capital and operating in stealth, the company is assembling a small, elite founding team to build systems that replace slow, manual, human-heavy processes with intelligent, autonomous software that operates continuously at enterprise scale.

The ambition is simple and uncompromising: build software that materially changes how large organizations operate.

The Role

This is a Founding Engineer role in the truest sense.

You will help design and build the company’s core intelligence platform from zero to production. You will make architectural decisions that matter. You will write software that ships. You will shape how engineering is done here.

If you are looking for comfort, stability, or clearly defined problems—this role is not for you.
If you want ownership, leverage, and the chance to work on systems that actually matter—keep reading.

Early hires directly unlock customer deployments and revenue.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build core systems end-to-end:

  • Data ingestion and pipelines

  • Model orchestration and feedback loops

  • APIs, services, and internal tooling

  • UI and workflow integrations where needed

• Own architectural decisions across the stack (TypeScript, Python, Go)

• Build systems that are scalable, durable, and evolvable—not demos

• Work closely with leadership to define product direction and technical trade-offs

• Set the technical and cultural bar for engineering as the company scales

• Engage with early customers when useful to deeply understand real problems

Who You Are

• 5–15 years of professional experience, with 5+ years in an engineering role

• Operated at senior scope in demanding environments

• Held a senior title at a company with a real hiring bar (e.g., FAANG, Databricks, Snowflake, or equivalent)

• Experienced across multiple parts of the stack

• Comfortable operating without a playbook

• Calm under ambiguity, decisive under pressure

• Low ego, high standards, strong sense of ownership