Founding Engineer

Department: Modo

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Compensation: $140K – $200K • 0.75% – 1.5%

Employment Type: FullTime

The Opportunity

Companies have spent billions on AI tools and tokens. Almost none of them can prove it’s working. 95% of organizations report zero measurable return from their AI investments. Not because the tools are bad, but because nobody redesigned the workflows, coached the teams, or measured what actually changed.

Modo is the AI success layer for the enterprise. We sit inside the flow of work, capture how teams actually use AI, guide them in the moment, and give leaders the ROI analytics to understand which AI tools and workflows are actually creating value.

Today, Modo helps companies drive AI adoption and prove ROI inside real workflows. As we capture more workflow context, Modo becomes the layer understanding how work actually gets done across teams, tools, and AI, which allows companies to build proprietary custom agents grounded in their own workflows.

We are a Seed stage startup, raised from One Way Ventures, Pear VC, Peterson Ventures, JFF Ventures, and a strong group of institutional investors and strategic operators. Now we need to build fast enough to match customer demand.

The Role

This is not a typical engineering role. You’ll be our founding engineer, with an outsized role in how the product, company, and engineering culture evolve.

You’ll write code, but you’ll also:

• Talk to customers and join pilot calls

• Turn feedback into product changes the same week

• Influence the roadmap directly

• Help close deals by building what matters fast

• Own features end-to-end, from prototype to production

In your first 90 days, you’ll:

• Ship production code to real pilot customers in your first weeks

• Build the core product surfaces: employee-facing guidance UX and manager dashboard

• Work across the stack (TypeScript, React, Next.js, Postgres, Electron/Tauri)

• Wire up LLM features that actually work in production, not just in a demo

• Set up the telemetry and eval systems that make our insights credible

In 6 months, you’ll:

• Own large product surface areas end-to-end

• Help convert pilots into paying contracts with your product work

• Drive the reliability and quality bar that enterprise buyers expect

• Start shaping engineering culture and hiring as we grow the team

In 12 months, you’ll:

• Architect key parts of the system

• Be known by name to our biggest customers

• Opportunity to lead engineering as we scale past our seed round

Competitive salary, meaningful early equity, and the chance to grow into an engineering leadership role as we scale.

Who We Want

• Shipping full-stack production-ready products in fast-moving environments

• Strong with TypeScript, React, Next.js, backend APIs, and Postgres

• Comfortable building across web and desktop (Electron, Tauri, or similar)

• Has built LLM-powered features in production, not just prototyped with them

• Production habits: CI/CD, testing, observability, pragmatic system design

• Native with AI coding agents (Claude Code/Codex)

• Obsessive about customer needs, not just abstract “users”

• Comfortable debugging, writing tests, talking to customers, and jumping on a pilot call

Bonus: Experience with building browser-based automation tools or developer/enterprise tools.

The Team

You’ll join Johnny Chang (Stanford top AI agent research, taught most Stanford AI flagship courses with professors like Andrew Ng) and Angelina You (Meta data science, Stanford MS Eng, product growth at CircleCI) as the founding engineer. Product, engineering, and customer work all run through the same room.

We’re backed by One Way Ventures, Pear VC, Peterson Ventures, JFF Ventures, and many more institutional funds and strategic angels.

Why Modo

• Founding team member. Shape culture, product, and technology from the ground up.

• Real ownership. Your code ships to enterprise customers from week one.

• Leadership trajectory. Designed to grow into a leading engineering role.

• In-person around SF. We believe great teams build faster together.

• Competitive pay + early equity. Rewarded for the outsized impact you’ll have.

How to Apply

Email johnny@joinmodo.com with:

• Your GitHub

• Your Resume

• 2 to 3 links to things you’ve shipped (projects, products, demos, write-ups)

• A short note on the most impressive thing you’ve built