Founding Engineer

Founding Product Engineer

$180,000–$220,000 base + equity

NYC (On-site)

A fast-growing AI company is building intelligent software and automation systems designed to modernize complex operational workflows. The team is small, product-focused, and moving quickly across AI-powered tooling, workflow automation, and internal intelligence systems.

They’re looking for a senior engineer who wants to build at the intersection of software craftsmanship, AI tooling, and high-impact product development.

The Opportunity

You’ll join as the fourth engineer on a highly collaborative team, shipping user-facing features end-to-end across frontend, backend, infrastructure, databases, and AI workflows. The product process is intentionally tight: customer discovery leads to high-fidelity prototypes, and engineering turns validated ideas into production software in days, not months.

The company is building a shared intelligence layer that powers core workflows across the platform, including automation systems, structured data workflows, AI-assisted decision making, and internal tooling. This hire will play a key role in shaping the systems that accelerate product velocity over the next phase of growth.

What You’ll Do

• Ship high-impact product features across core platform workflows
• Own projects end-to-end across frontend, backend, infrastructure, databases, and AI systems
• Build and improve AI-powered workflows leveraging LLMs, prompt systems, structured outputs, and internal tooling
• Contribute to the architecture and evolution of the company’s shared intelligence platform
• Improve engineering velocity through tooling, testing, infrastructure hardening, and developer experience
• Collaborate closely with PMs and leadership to rapidly productionize validated prototypes
• Build strong judgment around customer needs and challenge product decisions when necessary
• Operate as a highly autonomous engineer within a fast-moving, in-person team

What You’ll Bring

• Experience shipping production software in real-world environments
• Strong product intuition and the ability to quickly identify what matters most
• Experience building across the stack, from frontend UX to backend systems and infrastructure
• Experience working with AI-assisted development tools including Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, and similar platforms
• Familiarity with modern AI application patterns, including prompt engineering, retrieval workflows, structured generation, and evaluation loops
• Strong Python experience alongside modern TypeScript and JavaScript development
• Comfort working in ambiguity and moving quickly with high ownership
• A generalist mindset and willingness to jump between disciplines as needed
• Excitement about small, highly collaborative teams and in-person building
• Strong communication skills and thoughtful technical judgment

Tech Stack

• Python
• TypeScript and JavaScript
• React and modern frontend systems
• Backend APIs and distributed systems
• LLMs and AI application infrastructure
• AI-assisted development workflows
• Infrastructure and developer tooling
• Internal intelligence and automation platforms

Why Join?

• Work on meaningful problems using AI to improve complex operational workflows
• Join a deeply product-focused engineering culture that ships exceptionally fast
• Build alongside a small, senior, highly collaborative team
• High ownership and direct influence on product and technical direction
• Competitive compensation and meaningful equity upside
• Full healthcare coverage and standard benefits

About People In AI

People In AI partners with ambitious AI startups and technology companies to help them hire exceptional talent across engineering, research, product, and go-to-market functions. We work closely with founders and leadership teams building category-defining companies at the frontier of AI.