Founding Engineer
We're hiring: Founding Engineer | AI Agents | $150K–$250K + Equity | San FranciscoI'm partnering with an early-stage AI startup to find its first three engineers. This is an opportunity for exceptional builders who want to work directly with a founder, shape the technical direction and build a product from the ground up. The company is developing an operating system for AI-native service businesses: a platform where AI agents coordinate workflows and handle day-to-day business operations end to end. The founder is a second-time entrepreneur with a previous successful exit. The company has recently closed an angel funding round and is now building its founding engineering team.
The opportunity:
This isn't a conventional engineering role within an established organisation. You'll be among the first engineering hires, with substantial ownership over what gets built, how the system works and how the engineering team evolves. Depending on your strengths, you might focus on product engineering, AI agents and LLMs, or the infrastructure required to run reliable AI-powered systems in production. What you'll build
- AI agent infrastructure: Agent orchestration, tool use, execution environments, evaluation frameworks and reliable agent workflows.
- Production AI systems: Systems that enable AI agents to perform meaningful business operations, rather than simply generate responses.
- End-to-end products: Taking an initial customer problem from concept through implementation, deployment and iteration.
- Full-stack applications: Building product interfaces, backend services, APIs, integrations and data layers.
- Scalable infrastructure: Designing the architecture, reliability, observability and tooling needed to operate agent-driven services.
- Early engineering foundations: Making technical decisions, establishing development practices and helping shape the company's engineering culture. You'll work directly with the founder and early customers, with the freedom and responsibility to make decisions rather than simply implement someone else's specifications. Who should apply? We're particularly interested in hands-on engineers who have already demonstrated that they can build something from scratch. Relevant backgrounds include:
- Founding engineers or early engineers at AI-native startups, YC companies or other fast-moving technology businesses.
- Former founders, technical co-founders or CTOs who want to return to hands-on engineering.
- Product-minded engineers who can turn ambiguous customer problems into polished, working software.
- AI and ML engineers with practical experience building LLM applications, agent systems, orchestration frameworks or evaluation tooling.
- Full-stack and infrastructure engineers who have built and operated production systems.
- Engineers with standout technical projects, exceptional internships, competitive programming or Olympiad achievements, or other evidence of unusually strong technical ability. Technical experience that may be relevant Depending on your specialism, experience with the following could be valuable:
- LLM applications and AI agent frameworks
- Agent orchestration, tool calling and execution environments
- Evaluation, testing and observability for AI systems
- Python, TypeScript and modern software engineering
- Backend development, APIs and distributed systems
- Full-stack product development
- Cloud infrastructure, deployment and system reliability
- Data pipelines, integrations and workflow automation
- Building and shipping production software with AI-assisted development tools You don't need to tick every box. We care more about what you've personally built, the quality of your technical judgement and how quickly you can turn an idea into a working product. Compensation and working arrangements
- Base salary: $150,000–$250,000 USD
- Equity: 1–3%, with the possibility of co-founder-level equity for exceptional candidates
- Employment: Full-time
- Location: San Francisco, California
- Working arrangement: In person, six days per week
- Relocation support available
- Potential O-1 visa pathway for exceptional international candidates
Candidates currently based elsewhere, including Europe, are welcome to apply if they're genuinely prepared to relocate. A staged relocation may be possible in certain circumstances.
A note on the working culture: This is an unusually intense, early-stage startup environment. The founder is looking for people who genuinely want to build, take ownership and work closely together in person. This is not a remote or hybrid opportunity.
Interview process:
- Introductory conversation with the founder
- Technical and project deep-dive
- Technical interview
- Final discussions
If you've built something from zero, spend your time experimenting with AI agents and want the opportunity to shape an AI product at its earliest stage, I'd like to hear from you.
Interested, or know someone who could be a strong fit? please share / send me a DM or apply here:https://jobs.techtree.dev/job/6b2f0117-7aa1-4962-849c-74f6266ff146?tp=04b74924-4168-417c-91a8-2ec52e5b28a1#Hiring #Founding
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