Founding Engineer

About the Role We're an early-stage, fast-growing enterprise AI platform (agentic operating system for businesses) that has achieved strong product-market fit and is growing revenue rapidly. Backed by Y Combinator and prominent angel investors from the AI and SaaS world, we have thousands of AI agents deployed at scale-up startups and enterprise companies today. This is a founding engineer role — you'll operate at near-CTO level, taking vague problems all the way to shipped product with no hand-holding. You'll be backend-heavy and AI-native, but fully capable of going full-stack when needed. If you've ever wanted to shape a product and company from the ground up, this is that seat. What You'll Do Own large product areas end-to-end — from user insight through to production Build and continuously improve our agentic systems: accuracy, reliability, and capability Work at the frontier of AI engineering — context engineering, tool use, and agent architectures Talk directly to users, understand their pain points, and scope features that actually solve problems Ship full-stack when needed: Go backend, React + Vite (TypeScript) frontend Champion AI-first development practices — coding agents, automation, and ruthless self-scaling Review code quickly while maintaining high standards across the codebase Design and work with APIs (REST and/or gRPC) in microservices architectures Own CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, deployment workflows, and production observability What We're Looking For Must-haves: Proven production experience building backend services in Go (Golang) — this is a dealbreaker Authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship Experience building frontend applications with React and TypeScript Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and production monitoring/observability Experience building and consuming APIs (REST and/or gRPC) in microservices environments 0–3 years of professional software engineering experience (full-stack or equivalent) Strong pluses: Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or equivalent) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) Prior experience with AI infrastructure, prompt engineering, model deployment, or agent orchestration Experience designing and shipping AI-driven products; familiarity with agentic AI systems, LLMs, or AI agents Previous startup experience or a founding/early engineer background Experience with relational databases (Postgres/MySQL) and NoSQL, with solid understanding of data storage trade-offs AI research background or experience at an AI tooling/coding startup Former founder — or someone who has built something meaningful from scratch (startup, side project, shipped feature) Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience You thrive if you: Are a sharp, autonomous problem-solver who doesn't need a PM to decide what to build Have deep product sense and build for users, not for code's sake Are obsessed with using and building AI-first development tools (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, coding agents) Love clean, maintainable Go and hold high standards in code review Thrive in ambiguity and move fast without sacrificing quality Compensation & Benefits Salary: $120,000 – $250,000 USD annually, reflecting the outsized impact of this founding role Equity: Generous equity package commensurate with a founding-level position Unlimited AI tooling budget — we practice what we preach A seat at the table: you will shape the product and the company's direction Location On-site in San Francisco, CA Visa sponsorship is not available — candidates must be authorized to work in the United States