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Founding Engineer ($3M pre-seed)
Chicago, ILApril 5th, 2026
We're building the future of recruiting with AI - and we need an exceptional engineer to join our founding team in our San Francisco hackerhouse.We just raised a $3M pre-seed from top-tier investors and are looking for someone to be one of our first engineering hires. This is the real deal: meaningful equity, direct impact on product direction, and the chance to build something massive in a $600B industry ripe for disruption.What We're Building:Clera is reimagining how top talent finds their dream jobs. We're already working with leading VC-backed startups like Mintlify, Luminai, and Windsurf - automating the entire headhunting process end-to-end with AI agents.Thousands of talents engage with Clera every week. We've helped many land roles at companies they're genuinely excited about. Traditional recruiting is broken - we're fixing it with AI-first automation that delivers better outcomes for both candidates and companies.We're at the perfect inflection point: early enough that you'll have massive ownership and impact, but far enough that we have a working product, paying customers, and strong traction.The Role:You'll be engineer #4 on the founding team, working directly with our CTO and the other founding engineers. You'll ship features to production daily and own entire product areas from concept to deployment.We're building fully agentic systems that automate complex workflows. It's technically challenging, fast-paced, and high-impact.Your Experience:Very strong software engineering background: Experience in TypeScript and ReactStrong practical experience working with AI: We work 24/7 in Cursor - ideally you have experience coding with AI. Bonus if you have an experience working with LLM APIsStartup mindset - high agency, resourceful, and obsessed with creating valueWho You Are:Take full ownership of projects, from concept to deployment and do whatever it takes to get the job done.Write code fast and scrap it even faster, but know when to transition to building for scale and quality.Enjoy talking to customers and iterating based on feedback.Are willing to work hard, to create something new with a lot of impact, changing how millions of talents find their jobs in the future.Tech Stack: TypeScript, React, Cursor, Supabase, Prisma, Typesense, LLM APIs, Trigger.devThe SF Hackerhouse Setup:We're living and building together in SF. Zero commute, 10× faster feedback loops, constant collaboration.It's intense, but it's also incredibly productive and fun. You'll be surrounded by A-players who are all-in on building something great.Why Join Now:Be engineer #4 - your decisions will shape the entire productTrue ownership, no micromanagement, shipping to production every dayExperienced founders and a team of A PlayersMeaningful equity in a fast-growing startupJoin before we scale 10-100×We can support with visa processesCompensation: Competitive salary + significant equity
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