Founding Engineer – Full Stack

Department: Engineering

Location: San Francisco

Employment Type: FullTime

About the Role

Join the founding engineering team of a Y Combinator–backed AI startup building brand intelligence tooling at the intersection of AI research, product, and engineering. This company helps brands understand how large language models perceive and talk about them — and how to shape that narrative. As a Founding Engineer, you'll have outsized ownership and impact, working directly with customers and leadership to ship end-to-end features in a fast-moving environment.

What You'll Do

• Own problems end-to-end — from high-level customer insight through research and infrastructure.

• Maintain a close feedback loop with customers and the executive team, shipping quickly and iteratively.

• Help shape the culture, patterns, and practices of a brand-new engineering team.

• Continuously reinvent best practices for building alongside AI agents as a core part of the development workflow.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 1+ years of experience on an engineering team (2+ preferred); includes at least one stint of 18+ months in a strong engineering environment (scale-up or startup).

• Proficiency with React, Python, Terraform, and AWS.

• Comfortable working full-stack — from customer-facing UI all the way down to infrastructure.

• Experience building agentic systems.

• Strong product sense and design intuition; able to translate customer needs into shipped features.

• Startup experience or self-driven personal projects that demonstrate initiative and high agency.

• US citizen or eligible to work in the US (visa sponsorship available).

Nice to Have:

• Direct experience working with customers.

• Scientific or AI research background, especially in AI interpretability.

• Eagerness to adopt and adapt to AI-powered coding tools and emerging engineering workflows.

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually

• Early-stage equity

• Visa sponsorship available

Location

This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, CA. Remote work is not available for this position.