Founding Engineer - Consumer AI & Agentic Systems

Founding Engineer – Consumer AI & Agentic Systems

Location: New York, NY (Onsite)
Employment Type: Full-Time
Base Salary: $150,000–$250,000
Equity: 1%–3%
Work Authorization: Open to visa transfers, including OPT and H-1B transfers
Relocation Assistance: Not provided

About the Opportunity

We're partnering with a profitable, bootstrapped consumer AI company to hire a Founding Engineer for its small, fast-moving engineering team in New York City.

The company is building a consumer AI assistant focused on sustainability, privacy, and accessible artificial intelligence. In its first eight months, the platform has grown to more than 5 million users, with approximately 500,000–700,000 daily active users across the US, Europe, and Latin America.

Unlike traditional AI platforms, the company emphasizes efficient open-source models, sustainable data center infrastructure, and user privacy. It does not train models on users' conversations and is working to make consumer AI both more capable and environmentally responsible.

This is an opportunity to join a four-person engineering team, work directly with the founders, and take meaningful ownership of core AI systems and consumer-facing products.

The company is already profitable and is planning a significant fundraising round. The position offers substantial equity alongside competitive base compensation.

About the Role

We're looking for a highly capable, entrepreneurial engineer with strong backend or full-stack development skills and genuine hands‑on experience building applied AI systems.

Your primary responsibility will be developing and improving the company's core AI agent harness, including tool calling, memory, system prompts, retrieval, and evaluations.

This is not a position focused on building simple wrappers around existing LLM APIs. We're looking for someone who understands how agentic systems work, has personally built and shipped meaningful software, and is comfortable taking projects from initial concept through production.

You’ll work closely with the founders in a small, high‑ownership environment, helping shape both the product and its underlying architecture.

What You’ll Do

• Build and improve the core AI agent harness, including tool use, memory, system prompts, retrieval, and evaluations. This is the highest priority from day one.
• Own features across the consumer chat application and backend, from architecture and implementation through launch and iteration.
• Help integrate chat, AI agents, tools, and a growing application library into a cohesive consumer AI experience.
• Expand agent capabilities through virtual machines, advanced tooling, and scalable backend infrastructure.
• Design and improve databases and systems intended to support significant future growth, with a long‑term goal of scaling to 100 million or more users.
• Contribute to the deployment and optimization of approximately $5 million in planned NVIDIA B300 GPU infrastructure, including fine‑tuning and serving efficient open‑source models.
• Make engineering decisions balancing latency, cost, reliability, privacy, and user experience.
• Contribute to longer‑term initiatives, including an AI‑native mobile operating system and related consumer hardware.

Required Qualifications

Hands‑On Engineering Experience

• Approximately 1–5 years of engineering experience, including at least one year of substantial hands‑on software development.
• Experience may come from startup engineering roles or sustained independent and open‑source development. Coursework alone does not satisfy this requirement.
• Strong backend or full‑stack engineering capabilities, with the ability to take ownership of complex technical challenges.

Applied AI and Agentic Systems

• Hands‑on experience building an agent harness or agentic system involving tool calling, memory, system prompts, retrieval, or related components.
• Understanding of agent architecture beyond simply integrating an LLM SDK or API.
• Practical experience working with open‑source LLMs, including model serving, fine‑tuning, or evaluations.

Independent Product Development

• Demonstrated experience independently building and shipping a software product, startup project, side project, or open‑source tool.
• Evidence of measurable results, such as real users, revenue, or adoption.
• A public GitHub profile showcasing personal projects and consistent, recent development activity.

Communication and Ownership

• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate directly with founders and other engineers.
• High initiative, independent problem‑solving ability, and comfort operating with limited structure.
• Willingness to take responsibility for technical decisions and see projects through to completion.

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous experience as a founding or early engineer at an applied AI or consumer technology startup.
• Strong consumer product instincts and an understanding of user experience.
• Meaningful open‑source contributions.
• An established history of GitHub contributions and independent engineering work, particularly predating widespread AI coding tools.

Technology Environment

The engineering environment includes:

• AI agents and agent harnesses
• LLM tool calling and agent memory systems
• Prompt engineering and system prompts
• Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG)
• LLM evaluations
• Open‑source LLMs and model fine‑tuning
• NVIDIA B300 GPU infrastructure
• Agent virtual machines and sandboxed tooling
• Full‑stack and backend development
• Scalable databases and distributed infrastructure
• AI‑native Android development initiatives

Candidates are not expected to have professional experience with every technology listed. The priority is demonstrated engineering ability, deep applied AI experience, and the capacity to learn and build independently.

Work Environment and Expectations

This is an intensive, early‑stage engineering opportunity for someone who wants substantial responsibility and is excited about building alongside a small founding team.

• The role is based in New York City and is fully onsite.
• Candidates should expect to work in the office at least five days per week.
• The team frequently works additional days, sometimes up to seven days per week.
• Working hours are not fixed, and the culture emphasizes output, ownership, and commitment to execution.
• Limited flexibility may be considered for exceptional engineers.
• Relocation assistance is not provided.

Candidates should carefully consider these expectations before applying.

Compensation and Equity

• Base Salary: $150,000–$250,000 annually
• Equity: 1%–3%
• Employment: Full‑time

The company is bootstrapped and profitable, with plans for a significant fundraising round.

Important Note

Candidates selected to move forward should be prepared to participate in a 2–3 day onsite working trial in New York City as part of the hiring process.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

This is a chance to build foundational AI technology for an established, rapidly growing consumer platform while retaining the ownership and influence typically associated with a much earlier‑stage startup.

You’ll work on meaningful agentic AI challenges, contribute to large‑scale consumer infrastructure, and help develop efficient, privacy‑conscious AI products.

For an engineer who enjoys building independently, moving quickly, and taking real responsibility for what ships, this is an opportunity to have an outsized impact.