{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"24be4a8d9a9b8874422c5bf0","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/24be4a8d9a9b8874422c5bf0","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/24be4a8d9a9b8874422c5bf0","title":"Founding Engineer","description":"Tldr; Build the human escalation layer that every AI agent will rely on. Founding engineer, full equity band.\nAgents are now writing the majority of code in Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and Devin. They draft contracts. They run support. They've crossed the line from demo to production.\nBut agents still get stuck. They make confident mistakes in unfamiliar domains. They loop on bugs they can't diagnose. They ship architectures their users will quietly regret.\nMost people think this gap closes as models get better. We think it grows. As agents take on more autonomous, higher-stakes work, the long tail of \"things only a domain expert can resolve\" gets longer, not shorter. Every serious agentic system five years from now will have a human escalation layer underneath it.\nHumwork is building that layer.\nWhen an agent hits its limit, it calls Humwork. We match it to a verified expert — engineer, lawyer, infra specialist, designer, scientist, whoever fits — in under 30 seconds, hand off full context, and the expert works the problem inside the agent's loop. The agent resumes. The user never leaves their flow.\nWe launched as an MCP plugin a few months ago. We're already integrated across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT, Windsurf, and Lovable. Now we're scaling.\nWe need a founding engineer.\nWhat you'd own Surfaces you'll touch from week one:\nMatching engine. Embeddings + a domain matcher that routes a consultation to the right expert in seconds. Heavy on retrieval quality, candidate ranking, and tail coverage.\nRealtime infra. FastAPI + Postgres + Redis + Ably streaming an agent expert session, with reconnects, ordered delivery, and AI-summarized context handoff.\nThe MCP plugin layer. The tools, hooks, and skills that decide when an agent should raise an agent’s context and how it should describe the problem. This is the integration that ships into every host (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc.) — small surface, enormous leverage.\nExpert app (Expo / React Native / NativeWind) — what specialists open at 2am to pick up a session.\nClient dashboard, billing, ratings, observability — everything that turns this into a robust marketplace.\nYou won't get tickets. You'll see a problem, propose how to solve it, and ship it. We compress quarters into weeks.\nWe want to hear from you if You've done the work at the frontier. OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, Meta AI, Cursor, Cognition, Mercor, or somewhere similar. Or you've done equivalent work somewhere similar — we’ll know it when we see it.\nYou have range. You can move from a Postgres query plan to a tricky LLM eval to a React Native build without complaining. We hire for taste, not stack.\nYou have opinions about agent UX. You've watched agents fail in real workflows. You have a take on MCP, tool design, context handoff, and what an agent’s \"I'm stuck\" signal should look like.\nYou ship fast. You’d rather have something running in production than a perfect design doc.\nThe thesis moves you. We're betting humans and AI work better together than apart. If that doesn't resonate, the comp won't make up for it.\nCompensation $90K–$140K base\n2.5% – 5% equity\nFull health, dental, vision\nWhatever tools, hardware, and credits you need\nIn-person in SF. We're 2 people who ship every day. That doesn't work over Zoom.\nFounders Yash Goenka (CEO) — patent holder (graphene supercapacitor manufacturing), 2x founder, shipping LLM products since 2021, UC Berkeley.\nRohan Datta (CTO) — built an AI voice platform that handled 1M+ minutes of automated calls, drone imaging research at Berkeley, BS+MS Civil Engineering.\nFriends for 16 years. We move fast, disagree well, and care a lot about the craft.\n\n#J-18808-Ljbffr","company":"Humwork","rawCompany":"humwork","city":"Millbrae","state":"CA","isRemote":false,"isActive":true,"createdAt":"2026-07-30T03:16:49.952Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"},{"code":"17-2199.00","title":"Engineers, All Other","slug":"engineers-all-other"},{"code":"15-1221.00","title":"Computer and Information Research Scientists","slug":"computer-and-information-research-scientists"}],"industries":[{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"},{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Founding Engineer","description":"Tldr; Build the human escalation layer that every AI agent will rely on. Founding engineer, full equity band.\nAgents are now writing the majority of code in Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and Devin. They draft contracts. They run support. They've crossed the line from demo to production.\nBut agents still get stuck. They make confident mistakes in unfamiliar domains. They loop on bugs they can't diagnose. They ship architectures their users will quietly regret.\nMost people think this gap closes as models get better. We think it grows. As agents take on more autonomous, higher-stakes work, the long tail of \"things only a domain expert can resolve\" gets longer, not shorter. Every serious agentic system five years from now will have a human escalation layer underneath it.\nHumwork is building that layer.\nWhen an agent hits its limit, it calls Humwork. We match it to a verified expert — engineer, lawyer, infra specialist, designer, scientist, whoever fits — in under 30 seconds, hand off full context, and the expert works the problem inside the agent's loop. The agent resumes. The user never leaves their flow.\nWe launched as an MCP plugin a few months ago. We're already integrated across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT, Windsurf, and Lovable. Now we're scaling.\nWe need a founding engineer.\nWhat you'd own Surfaces you'll touch from week one:\nMatching engine. Embeddings + a domain matcher that routes a consultation to the right expert in seconds. Heavy on retrieval quality, candidate ranking, and tail coverage.\nRealtime infra. FastAPI + Postgres + Redis + Ably streaming an agent expert session, with reconnects, ordered delivery, and AI-summarized context handoff.\nThe MCP plugin layer. The tools, hooks, and skills that decide when an agent should raise an agent’s context and how it should describe the problem. This is the integration that ships into every host (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, etc.) — small surface, enormous leverage.\nExpert app (Expo / React Native / NativeWind) — what specialists open at 2am to pick up a session.\nClient dashboard, billing, ratings, observability — everything that turns this into a robust marketplace.\nYou won't get tickets. You'll see a problem, propose how to solve it, and ship it. We compress quarters into weeks.\nWe want to hear from you if You've done the work at the frontier. OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, Meta AI, Cursor, Cognition, Mercor, or somewhere similar. Or you've done equivalent work somewhere similar — we’ll know it when we see it.\nYou have range. You can move from a Postgres query plan to a tricky LLM eval to a React Native build without complaining. We hire for taste, not stack.\nYou have opinions about agent UX. You've watched agents fail in real workflows. You have a take on MCP, tool design, context handoff, and what an agent’s \"I'm stuck\" signal should look like.\nYou ship fast. You’d rather have something running in production than a perfect design doc.\nThe thesis moves you. We're betting humans and AI work better together than apart. If that doesn't resonate, the comp won't make up for it.\nCompensation $90K–$140K base\n2.5% – 5% equity\nFull health, dental, vision\nWhatever tools, hardware, and credits you need\nIn-person in SF. We're 2 people who ship every day. That doesn't work over Zoom.\nFounders Yash Goenka (CEO) — patent holder (graphene supercapacitor manufacturing), 2x founder, shipping LLM products since 2021, UC Berkeley.\nRohan Datta (CTO) — built an AI voice platform that handled 1M+ minutes of automated calls, drone imaging research at Berkeley, BS+MS Civil Engineering.\nFriends for 16 years. We move fast, disagree well, and care a lot about the craft.\n\n#J-18808-Ljbffr","datePosted":"2026-07-30T03:16:49.952Z","dateModified":"2026-07-30T03:16:49.952Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Humwork","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Millbrae","addressRegion":"CA","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"24be4a8d9a9b8874422c5bf0"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/24be4a8d9a9b8874422c5bf0"}}