Founding Engineer

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

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Founding Engineer
Location

San Francisco, CA / New York, NY

On-site role requiring 5 days/week in the office.
Compensation

$175,000 - $250,000 Base + Competitive Founding Equity
Total compensation: $175,000 - $300,000 depending on equity and candidate profile.
Visa

Open to H-1B Transfers / OPT Transfers / New H-1B / TN
Open to visa transfers and new visa sponsorships.
Company Stage

Seed / Early-Stage - AI-Native Healthcare Technology Company
Industry

Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Health Insurance, InsurTech, Enterprise Software, AI Agents, Benefits Technology

About the Company

Our client is building an AI-native health insurance platform designed to transform how small businesses access and manage employee health benefits.

The company is replacing the traditional health insurance brokerage model with AI-powered workflows that automate complex brokerage and servicing processes while enabling human brokers to provide higher-quality, consultative guidance.

The platform uses AI agents to automate labor-intensive workflows including plan research, quoting, enrollment, and ongoing benefits servicing.

Backed by leading venture capital investors, the company operates as a small, talent-dense organization with a highly experienced founding team and a rapidly expanding engineering function.

As a Founding Engineer, you'll join a small engineering team and have significant ownership over product architecture, AI systems, user experience, and engineering culture.

This is an opportunity for a strong full-stack or backend-focused engineer who wants to build AI-native products from 0-to-1 while solving high-impact problems in healthcare and insurance.

What You'll Do

• Build and iterate on agentic AI systems that automate complex health insurance brokerage workflows
• Develop AI agents that support broker analysis and operational workflows
• Build systems that help service operators serve significantly more clients at higher quality
• Own full-stack product development from initial concept through production
• Design backend services and APIs using Python
• Build frontend applications and user experiences using TypeScript and React
• Integrate LLMs into production applications
• Build and maintain AI agent orchestration systems
• Design evaluation systems for AI agents
• Develop guardrails and reliability infrastructure for high-stakes AI workflows
• Build systems that monitor and evaluate AI agent performance
• Develop tools and workflows using MCP and modern AI infrastructure
• Translate complex insurance workflows into scalable software systems
• Work directly with brokers and internal service operators to understand operational pain points
• Build tools that improve broker productivity and customer experience
• Design systems capable of handling complex and messy real-world insurance data
• Build AI-powered workflows for plan research and comparison
• Develop systems supporting quoting and enrollment workflows
• Build automation for ongoing customer servicing
• Work across the product stack based on the highest-priority company needs
• Make architecture and technology decisions in a rapidly evolving environment
• Own technical projects from ideation through production deployment
• Build reusable infrastructure and engineering patterns as the company scales
• Help define the technical architecture for a rapidly growing AI-native product
• Establish engineering standards and development practices
• Contribute to engineering culture as the team scales
• Collaborate closely with the founding team and engineering leadership
• Balance rapid iteration with reliability and quality
• Solve ambiguous technical problems using first-principles thinking
• Work closely with internal stakeholders to rapidly validate and improve products
• Build products that directly impact how small businesses and employees access healthcare benefits
• Help shape the long-term engineering and AI strategy of the company

Ideal Candidate Background
Experience Requirements

• 2-8 years of experience in software engineering or related technical roles
• Experience owning products or major projects end-to-end
• Experience in full-stack or backend-focused engineering roles
• Strong experience building and shipping production software
• Experience taking products from ideation through production
• Experience working in startup or high-growth environments preferred
• Experience building user-facing applications
• Experience working with AI-powered products preferred
• Experience with LLMs, AI agents, or modern AI tooling preferred
• Strong ability to operate independently
• Experience working in highly ambiguous environments
• Strong product engineering mindset
• Experience collaborating directly with users or internal stakeholders
• Experience making architectural decisions with limited precedent
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership beyond narrowly defined engineering tasks

Technical Requirements

• Strong Python proficiency
• Strong TypeScript proficiency
• Strong backend engineering fundamentals
• Strong full-stack engineering capabilities
• Experience building production APIs
• Experience building user-facing applications
• Strong React experience
• Experience working with LLMs and AI APIs
• Experience building or integrating AI agents preferred
• Experience with agentic AI systems preferred
• Experience with AI evaluation systems preferred
• Experience designing AI guardrails and reliability systems preferred
• Experience with MCP or MCP-connected systems preferred
• Strong software architecture fundamentals
• Experience with distributed or scalable systems preferred
• Strong API design and integration skills
• Experience working with databases and data models
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills
• Experience building production-grade software
• Ability to rapidly learn emerging AI technologies
• Ability to evaluate and integrate new AI tooling
• Ability to build reliable applications on top of modern AI infrastructure
• Strong understanding of application architecture
• Ability to work across frontend, backend, and AI systems
• Strong systems design and engineering fundamentals

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field preferred
• Strong computer science fundamentals
• Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted
• Candidates with strong technical pedigree through high-growth startups, leading technology companies, trading firms, or top-tier universities preferred

Soft Skills

• Exceptional ownership and execution ability
• Highly hands-on engineering mindset
• Strong builder mentality
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments
• Strong first-principles problem-solving ability
• Excellent technical communication skills
• Strong product intuition
• Strong customer empathy
• Comfortable working directly with brokers and service operators
• Strong curiosity around AI and emerging technologies
• Comfortable learning rapidly
• Strong bias toward action
• Comfortable taking ownership without heavy direction
• Strong architectural judgment
• Comfortable making decisions with incomplete information
• Strong ability to prioritize competing technical and product needs
• Low-ego working style
• Strong collaboration skills
• Comfortable working closely with founders
• Strong sense of urgency
• Comfortable working in a small, talent-dense engineering team
• Strong interest in healthcare and insurance technology
• Strong interest in AI agents and AI-native products
• Comfortable working across the full product stack
• Comfortable building from 0-to-1
• Strong communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders
• High slope and learning velocity
• Strong engineering quality instincts
• Comfortable working on-site in San Francisco or New York 5 days/week

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $175,000 - $250,000
• Total compensation: $175,000 - $300,000
• Competitive founding equity package
• Opportunity to join an early-stage AI-native healthcare company
• Founding-level ownership over product and engineering decisions
• Opportunity to shape engineering culture and architecture
• Direct collaboration with founders and senior technical leadership
• Opportunity to build AI agent systems from 0-to-1
• Exposure to LLMs, MCP, AI agents, and modern AI infrastructure
• Opportunity to solve complex healthcare and insurance workflows
• High autonomy and significant technical ownership
• Opportunity to build products directly impacting access to healthcare benefits
• Small, highly talented engineering organization
• Strong mission-driven culture
• Opportunity to influence the company's technical direction as the engineering team scales
• H-1B, OPT, TN, and other visa support

Why Join

This is an opportunity to become one of the earliest engineers at an AI-native healthcare company transforming how small businesses access health insurance.

You'll work directly on agentic AI systems that automate complex brokerage workflows while helping human brokers deliver significantly better service to their customers.

As a founding engineer, you'll have unusually broad ownership across AI systems, backend infrastructure, frontend product development, data models, and user experience.

You'll work closely with a small, highly experienced team where engineering decisions have immediate impact and where there is no established playbook for many of the problems you'll be solving.

If you enjoy building 0-to-1 products, working with AI agents, solving ambiguous problems, owning systems end-to-end, and building technology with meaningful real-world impact, this role offers exceptional technical scope and founding-level ownership.