Founding Engineer
$250kDEX
Founding Engineer (San Francisco Startups | up to $250k+ + equity) Salary: Total compensation up to $250,000+ plus meaningful equity Dex is an intelligent recruiter that helps you run your job search. Tell Dex about your experience, what you want to build or solve, and your non-negotiables — we only surface the handful of roles genuinely worth your time, and manage the applications on your behalf. San Francisco has no shortage of startups calling every hire a founding engineer. The seats worth taking are rarer: real ownership, founders you'd back, and a company early enough that your fingerprints end up on everything. We work with these founders directly and know what they're building and how they're funded, so the roles we show you have already passed the filter you'd want to apply yourself. The opportunities Compensation at these companies can reach $250k+, with equity that's meant to matter. You'd be among the first engineers in the building — owning whole domains from architecture to ship, working in the room with the founders, and setting the standards everyone hired after you inherits. Early-stage pace, with backing serious enough to build properly. You could work on Building the product from the ground up with the founders Owning entire domains end-to-end, architecture through to ship Setting the engineering culture and standards from day one Wearing whatever hat the week requires, and shaping what gets built You may have Strong generalist engineering and a builder's instinct Comfort with ambiguity and an early-stage pace The appetite for the whole problem, not a slice of it Prior founding or early-startup experience — a bonus, not a requirement Why apply through Dex? We put you in front of the right founders with a proper introduction, not a cold application — and you stay in control of what moves forward. As part of the recruitment process at Dex, we process your personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice for Job Applicants. This notice explains how and why your data is collected and used, and how you can contact us if you have any concerns. #J-18808-Ljbffr
$150k
About the Role This is a founding engineering seat at a Y Combinator-backed consumer wearable startup building hardware at the intersection of biometrics, emotional intelligence, and on-device inference. The team is small, the product is already on users' wrists, and...SuggestedFull timeContract workRemote work$175k - $200k
...marketing teams improve return on ad spend, lift conversion rates, and dramatically cut production costs. We're looking for a Founding Engineer (Full-Stack) to join our small, high-ownership team on-site in San Francisco. This is a foundational role: you'll work...SuggestedFull timeLocal areaRelocationVisa sponsorshipRelocation package$150k - $250k
...places, millions of events) and is now building an intelligent, social product experience on top of it. They're looking for a Founding Engineer to join on-site in San Francisco. This is a rare opportunity to shape core systems and product from the ground up alongside...SuggestedFull timeRemote workRelocationVisa sponsorship$160k - $270k
...stage AI infrastructure company — backed by prominent investors including researchers from OpenAI and DeepMind — is hiring 2-3 Founding Engineers to own the core of its graph-native database platform. Built on object storage and purpose-designed for AI agent workloads,...SuggestedFull timeWork at officeFlexible hours$70k - $100k
About the Role This is a founding-stage full-stack engineering role at an early-stage B2B SaaS cleantech startup building AI-powered software that controls and optimizes industrial and commercial battery storage assets. The platform addresses real-world energy challenges...SuggestedFull timeRelocationVisa sponsorship$175k - $225k
About the Role This is a rare, one-of-a-kind founding engineer position at an early-stage consumer AI startup building a real-time platform designed to digitize human connection. Working directly alongside the founder, you'll help shape the technical foundation, engineering...Full timeRemote workVisa sponsorship$120k - $250k
...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...Full time$120k - $190k
..., and compliance workflows — helping paramedics get paid and protecting 911 services across the country. We're looking for a Founding Engineer to join as one of the earliest technical hires. This role blends hands-on, end-to-end engineering with direct customer engagement...Full timeWork at officeImmediate startRemote work2 days per week3 days per week$80k - $120k
About the Role This is a Founding Engineer position at an early-stage enterprise AI automation startup based in Munich, Germany. The company builds AI-powered tooling that learns from real human workflows — particularly screen- and video-based processes — and automates...Full timeLocal areaRemote workVisa sponsorship$185k - $215k
...gap between referral and care. The result is better patient experiences and health outcomes. Our founding team pairs deep experience investing in health tech with engineering expertise from Meta and we just raised a $2.5M pre-seed led by GreyMatter. About the Role...Work at officeFlexible hours- ...well as leading YC alumni. About the role As part of our founding team, you will have a high agency role in bringing AI to the... ...sponsor H1-Bs, OPTs are fine) ~2+ years of software engineering experience (new grads encouraged since pet projects count) ~...Immediate startRelocationFlexible hours
- ...Founding Software Engineer HMBL is your premiere Talent Partner and Executive Search Solution. We were founded on the fact that technical recruiting is most fruitful via partnership --than it is transactional. We partner the most innovative, cutting-edge tech companies...
- ...tl;dr: Interface is looking for generalist founding engineers (ml, data, full-stack) who are scrappy, push boundaries and have a need to win. We need to work hard and build quickly to win. We want people to challenge our ideas and build alternatives. LFG who you are make...Work at office
- ...Founding Full-Stack Engineer Opportunity Hi, my name is Gabriel and I'm the founder of Y/n. Y/n is an app where you can create, share, and play interactive stories. Today, 100K+ teenagers spend 3+ hours a day in the app playing characters in text stories of their...Relocation
$150k - $250k
...and be the sole identity + communication provider. It isn't AI for your email, it's email for your AI. We're looking for a founding engineer with strong backend and infra instincts to help build the primitives agents will use to communicate, authenticate, and operate...Full time- ...energy, telecom, healthcare, and more. AI is making it easier to ship code; Metalware is making it easier to ship secure code. Founding Engineer We’re looking for founding engineers to drive our product development from the ground floor. You won’t just optimize existing...Weekend work
$160k - $230k
...talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire. Founding Engineer Location - San Francisco, CA (Onsite) Compensation - $160,000 - $230,000 Base + Competitive Equity (0.5%-1%) Visa...Remote workVisa sponsorship- ...researcher who has spent his entire career in enterprise AI, leading engineering teams from seed through Series C. The broader team includes... .... We hold a high bar of excellence that starts with the founding team. Background Deploying truly impactful AI Agents today requires...
$140k
...About The Role Hiring a full‑stack/founding engineer to join our team focused on product engineering and shipping new features. Things you'll be working on Build out agentic workflows that design, build, and optimize online shops Build out product & payments processing...Work at office- ...needed. No hand‑holding. No waiting for specs. You're a full‑stack engineer, an AI engineer, and a product engineer in one person. Former... ...impact this role will have. A seat at the table. This is a founding role, you'll shape the product and the company. We're building...
- ...Python React Gauge helps companies show up in more AI answers. AI engines received 7 billion visits last month, up 76% from last year.... ...successful companies (PostHog, Supabase). About the role We’re hiring a Founding Full-Stack Engineer to join our team! This role is full-time in...Full timeWork at officeImmediate startShift work
$180k - $230k
...Founding Engineer San Francisco, CA · On-site · Full-time Compensation: $180,000–$230,000 + equity About the Company Our client is an early-stage (pre-seed) healthcare AI company building referral infrastructure that helps patients move from a primary or urgent care visit...Full timeVisa sponsorship- ...Hi, I’m Nik. I’m looking for a world‑class founding engineer to build Omi with me. Omi is AI for your real life. Think: wearable memory, voice‑first interface, the reverse iPhone. In the past 10 months, we’ve: Grown to 300K software users Hit 100M+ organic video views...
$170k - $250k
...Founding Full-Stack/Product Engineer | AI Agents for Healthcare | San Francisco, CA | $170K-$250K + 0.5-1.5% Equity Since launching, the team has signed one of the top 3 largest for-profit hospital systems in the country and is processing thousands of patients monthly...Full time- ...Second Founding Engineer Opportunity We're hiring a second founding engineer! You'll be team member #5, working closely with co-founders Joseph + Wilbur and our engineering team and you'll have significant ownership over the parts of the product you want to cover. As...Work at office
$140k - $180k
...About the RoleJoin a small, high-velocity founding team as engineer #4, working directly with the CTO and fellow founding engineers at an AI-powered talent acquisition startup in San Francisco. This is a hands-on, high-ownership role where you'll ship features to production...Visa sponsorship- ...Empathic Labs is building a real-time AI-enabled platform to digitize human connection. This founding engineer role is a unique 1-of-1 position alongside a Thiel Fellow founder, directly shaping the product and engineering culture as the company moves quickly. You’ll help...
- ...to automate the repetitive work currently handled manually across emails, spreadsheets and legacy systems. They are hiring a Founding Engineer to work directly with the founders and customers, understand how these businesses operate and build the product from first conversation...
- ...meaningful projects in our product pipeline, and we need to grow the engineering team to build out the vision. From day 1 you’ll hit the ground... ...with some of the most exciting work of your career. As a Founding AI Engineer, you’ll be working on new applications of AI that...
- ...Parachute is a Y Combinator S25 startup building an agentic trading platform. As a Founding Engineer, you will work directly with the founders to build production-grade agentic systems, backend infrastructure, and state-of-the-art quantitative trading strategies and backtesting...
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