Founding Engineer

SpecOps.AI SpecOps.AI is the governance and orchestration layer for regulated agentic AI. The platform where your rules meet your work. We help builders, lean teams, agency partners, and regulated and federal organizations operationalize AI safely on top of the systems they already run: build it, run it, host it, and prove every move, human or AI. Platform Status The platform has moved past MVP and is going live. We have an active pipeline, real opportunities in motion, and a fundraise on the near horizon. We are looking for the right partner to step in now, lead the technical vision, drive customer and partner engagements, and own engineering as we take this to market. Agentic AI, runtime governance, and provable delivery, in a market shifting from "can AI do this" to "can we trust and prove what it did." The Role This is a part‑time founding seat, built for a senior engineer who is ready to make a move but wants to do it right. You keep your current role while committing meaningful hours here. You prove the fit. We build trust. When the raise closes and the business scales, this becomes your full‑time leadership seat as Head of Engineering. This is not a contractor seat. You are a partner. You step in and own the technical vision and product direction alongside the founder. You lead technical engagements with customers and partners, architect the path to launch, and set the standards the engineering org will be built on. You also sit with customers and partners directly: translating the platform into solutions, building integration strategy, and representing SpecOps.AI in the conversations that close deals and build the ecosystem. Compensation and Structure This is a founding‑equity‑first opportunity. We are bootstrapped, the platform is going live with an active pipeline, and a fundraise is on the near horizon. The structure is: Phase1 (now, part‑time): Equity stake with a co‑founder‑track arrangement as we go to market and move into the raise. No base salary. This works because you still have your current income and can transition on your own terms. Phase2 (post‑raise, full‑time): Transition to a salaried Head of Engineering role with retained equity and vesting. The part‑time path is the on‑ramp, not the destination. We are transparent about where we are. If the equity‑first, part‑time‑to‑full‑time path does not fit your situation, this is not the right seat. If you want to own a meaningful piece of a defensible platform in a frontier market and help take it to launch, this is exactly that. What You Will Own The platform and its engines: Sherpa, Orchestrator, Overwatch, and FLEX. Harden them, bring them to launch, make them yours. The moat: runtime policy enforcement at the action boundary, and tamper‑evident provenance of human‑and‑AI work. The hardest, most defensible things we build. Agentic orchestration: governed agent and workflow execution across the customer's stack, model‑agnostic, with LangGraph and MCP. Integration strategy: architect the partner integrations and preconfigured solution packages that let us meet customers on the tools they already own. Technical engagements: lead customer solutioning, partner architecture discussions, and the technical conversations that move deals forward. The team and the standards: lead the pod, set secure, compliance‑grade engineering practices for regulated and federal environments. A seat at the strategy table: product direction, technical roadmap, and go‑to‑market inputs are all yours to shape. Who You Are You are a senior engineer with an entrepreneurial streak you have not fully scratched yet. You are good at what you do, you want more than a paycheck, and you have been looking for the right opportunity to step into something early — without betting everything on day one. This is that opportunity. You are a builder, not just a coder. You have shipped real backend systems in production — APIs, integrations, distributed services — and you have opinions about how to do it right. Security, reliability, and architecture are things you think about naturally, not boxes you check at the end. You move without being pushed. Early‑stage environments suit you. You are comfortable making calls with incomplete information, you take ownership end‑to‑end, and you know how to work lean and ship fast without cutting corners that matter. You can represent the company externally. You can sit across from a customer or partner, make the technical case, and move things forward. This is not a heads‑down seat. You see the upside in this structure. Part‑time now, full‑time as Head of Engineering post‑raise, with real equity. You understand what early stage looks like and you are ready to build toward it. Govtech, regulated‑industry, or enterprise environment experience — you have built things where security, auditability, and compliance are real constraints, not checkbox exercises. Hands‑on with AI/ML as a builder — you have integrated LLM APIs, worked with LangGraph or similar agentic orchestration frameworks, or shipped systems where AI is a functional component. You do not need to be a researcher; you need to know how to use these tools to build. Our stack: TypeScript, Bun (our runtime), Next.js, Postgres and Drizzle, LangGraph, the Anthropic Claude API, and MCP. Strong familiarity with any of these is a plus; curiosity about the rest is required. Dev‑tools or open‑source credibility. Experience designing partner ecosystems or developer‑facing APIs that others build on top of. Who We Serve Builders and AI‑first founders shipping past the prototype. Lean teams adopting AI without an AI bench. Agency partners delivering to their own clients on our platform. Regulated and federal organizations that need it governed and proven. You will build for the builder and the regulated buyer at the same time, and you will be fluent talking to both. Why This Seat Founding‑level equity with vesting and real ownership of the technical destiny. A co‑founder track for the right person, earned through contribution and trust. Direct work with the founder, high autonomy, and a real say in where the company and product go. A frontier, validated market, and a platform ready to launch. And a path that lets you make the move without betting everything on day one. Based in Atlanta, GA. Open to remote for the right person. Application Show us something you built and led, ideally AI‑native. Tell us the hardest technical thing you have shipped and why it was hard. Reach Ron directly. #J-18808-Ljbffr