Founding Engineer

We are hiring for our client— a well-funded AI startup creating innovative products at the intersection of web applications and modern AI. Their goal is to build seamless, delightful personalization experiences that enhance everyday life through trusted services. About the company Backed by top Silicon Valley venture capital and leading angels from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, NVIDIA/ARM, and Oracle AI. Led by proven Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who have scaled startups to IPOs and Fortune 500 exits. We are looking for a Founding Engineer , who will help define and build the core product from the ground up. This is a true zero-to-one role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, moves quickly, and cares deeply about engineering craft, product quality, and long-term technical leverage. You’ll work closely with the founders, product, and design to architect, build, and ship the platform. You’ll stay hands-on across the stack, make foundational technical decisions, and help shape both the product and engineering culture from day one. What you’ll do Build and scale core product and platform systems from prototype to production. Own major pieces of architecture, implementation, and execution. Write production code every week and ship alongside the team. Design APIs, debug live issues, build infrastructure, and improve developer velocity. Make smart technical tradeoffs across frontend, backend, data, cloud, and AI infrastructure. Partner directly with founders and cross-functional teammates to turn ambiguity into concrete execution. Help establish lightweight engineering processes, reliability standards, and technical best practices. Contribute to the hiring and growth of the engineering team as the company scales. What we’re looking for 10+ years of engineering experience, with strong startup or product company experience. (prior startup and consumer tech business experience is a MUST) Must be a deeply hands-on engineer , writing code daily and constantly looking for ways to improve the codebase Proven track record of building systems from zero to one. Strong full-stack expertise across frontend, backend, cloud, data, and ideally AI/ML systems. Strong product judgment and comfort making fast, pragmatic decisions. Excellent communication and collaboration skills. Experience operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments. Nice to have Prior founding engineer or early engineer experience. Experience shipping AI-powered consumer products, personalization, or agentic systems. Experience with modern AI infrastructure such as RAG, vector databases, or evaluation tooling. Background in distributed systems, real-time infrastructure, or low-latency services. Join a core founding team at a well-funded AI startup. Work with proven founders and top-tier investors. Have real ownership, high impact, and meaningful upside. Help define both the product and engineering culture from the ground up. Location Bay Area candidates welcome to apply (job location is on site in Palo Alto) Interested candidates can also write to View email address on click.appcast.io with their resumes and background. We will reach out to shortlisted candidates for a chat to discuss more about the role! #J-18808-Ljbffr Qrata