Founding Engineer

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware 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 (On-site) - On-site role in San Francisco, CA.
Compensation - $200,000 - $400,000 Base + Significant Early-Stage Equity (1%+ for Founding Engineers)
Visa - Open to Visa Transfers and Visa Sponsorships (OPT, H1B Transfers, New H1B, TN)
Company Stage - Extremely Early Stage - Seed / Incubation
Industry - Artificial Intelligence, AI Security, Cybersecurity, Enterprise Software, AI Infrastructure, Distributed Systems, Agentic AI

About the Company

Our client is building infrastructure required to secure and control the most powerful forms of artificial intelligence.

The company helps large enterprises observe, secure, and optimize their internal AI usage at massive scale, providing visibility into what models and agents are doing, what they access, what they cost, and the risks associated with their actions.

The company is operating at an extremely early stage with a very small founding engineering team and is already working with major enterprise customers.

The platform is focused on securing the emerging world of cloud-based AI agents by combining real-time telemetry, identity, security infrastructure, behavioral analysis, and AI-powered detection and enforcement.

The founding team brings deep experience across AI security, enterprise software, infrastructure, and high-scale engineering organizations, with the company backed by leading technology investors and experienced enterprise technology operators.

As a Founding Engineer, you'll have significant ownership over the platform's architecture and technical direction while building systems that secure AI agents and enterprise AI infrastructure at unprecedented scale.

This is an opportunity to work directly with enterprise customers, build real-time AI security infrastructure, solve difficult distributed systems and machine learning problems, and operate as one of the earliest technical members of a highly ambitious company.

What You'll Do

• Own and ship entire product features end-to-end that go live with enterprise customers within weeks
• Build the data plane responsible for ingesting an enterprise's AI footprint
• Design high-volume data ingestion systems for heterogeneous telemetry from EDR, network, identity, and model gateways
• Build real-time detection and policy enforcement systems for novel AI agent failure modes
• Design and implement real-time data infrastructure for enterprise AI workloads
• Work directly with enterprise customers during proof-of-concepts and deployments
• Ship product capabilities directly in response to customer requirements and feedback
• Build systems capable of processing large-scale AI telemetry with strict latency requirements
• Train and deploy small models for fast inline behavioral judgments
• Develop behavioral baselines and detection systems for AI agents and enterprise AI activity
• Red-team AI models and agents to identify failures before they reach customers
• Identify and mitigate prompt injection, tool misuse, data exfiltration, and scope drift risks
• Build security systems capable of evaluating AI agent behavior in real time
• Work across distributed systems, streaming pipelines, machine learning, and security infrastructure
• Design scalable architectures for high-volume real-time enterprise workloads
• Shape the technical architecture and engineering direction of the platform
• Make critical technical decisions across infrastructure, backend systems, security, and AI systems
• Work closely with founders and the founding engineering team on product and technical strategy
• Operate with minimal scaffolding in a highly ambiguous and fast-moving environment
• Own production reliability, performance, scalability, and operational outcomes
• Work directly with customers rather than relying exclusively on sales or product teams
• Translate customer problems into technical solutions and shipped software
• Continuously improve the platform's detection, security, performance, and reliability

Ideal Candidate Background
Experience Requirements

• 0-5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including exceptional internship or early-career experience
• Strong backend or full-stack engineering background
• Proven experience shipping production software
• Experience building and deploying production systems at high-quality engineering organizations
• Experience owning technical features or systems end-to-end
• Strong ability to operate in highly ambiguous and fast-moving environments
• Experience working with high-scale or technically complex systems preferred
• Experience working in startup or high-intensity engineering environments preferred
• Strong technical ownership and execution ability
• Comfortable shipping directly to enterprise customers
• Experience working closely with customers or end users preferred
• Ability to operate independently with minimal structure or scaffolding
• Strong interest in AI security, distributed systems, machine learning, or infrastructure
• Comfortable taking broad technical responsibility despite limited organizational structure
• Demonstrated ability to learn complex technical domains quickly
• Strong builder mentality and willingness to work at founding-stage intensity

Technical Requirements

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals
• Strong full-stack engineering capabilities
• Strong understanding of distributed systems
• Experience building production data infrastructure
• Experience with streaming pipelines or real-time data systems preferred
• Experience with Go, Rust, or comparable systems programming languages preferred
• Experience working with high-volume data ingestion systems
• Experience with cloud infrastructure and production deployments
• Experience with APIs, services, and backend architectures
• Experience with machine learning or applied ML preferred
• Experience with LLMs or AI systems preferred
• Experience with model post-training or inference systems preferred
• Experience building low-latency production systems preferred
• Experience with security engineering or cybersecurity systems preferred
• Experience with EDR, identity, network, or security integrations preferred
• Strong software architecture and systems thinking
• Strong debugging and production troubleshooting capabilities
• Ability to reason about latency, scalability, reliability, and system performance
• Ability to work across backend, infrastructure, security, AI, and data systems
• Ability to learn unfamiliar technologies and technical domains quickly

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field preferred
• Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted
• Strong computer science, systems, algorithms, and software engineering fundamentals

Soft Skills

• Exceptional technical ownership
• Strong analytical and problem-solving ability
• Deep technical curiosity
• Strong systems thinking
• Strong builder mentality
• Comfortable working with significant ambiguity
• Strong communication skills
• Comfortable working directly with founders
• Comfortable working directly with enterprise customers
• High execution velocity
• Strong bias toward shipping
• Strong ability to reason from first principles
• Comfortable making technical decisions independently
• Strong architectural judgment
• Low-ego collaborative mentality
• Comfortable operating with minimal scaffolding
• Strong product intuition
• Strong customer orientation
• Comfortable receiving and incorporating direct customer feedback
• Comfortable working in a highly intense early-stage environment
• Strong willingness to work onsite in San Francisco
• Comfortable operating with a high degree of responsibility at an extremely early-stage company
• Strong interest in AI security, agentic systems, and emerging infrastructure

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $200,000 - $400,000
• Significant early-stage equity, with 1%+ possible for founding engineers
• Compensation scales with experience
• Opportunity to join an extremely early-stage founding engineering team
• Significant ownership over platform architecture and technical direction
• Opportunity to build AI security infrastructure from the ground up
• Opportunity to work directly with major enterprise customers
• Exposure to distributed systems, streaming infrastructure, AI security, and machine learning
• Opportunity to solve novel problems across security, inference, post-training, and real-time systems
• Direct collaboration with founders and founding engineers
• High-impact environment with rapid product iteration
• Opportunity to shape engineering standards and technical culture
• Visa transfer and sponsorship support

Why Join

This is an opportunity to join an extremely early-stage company tackling one of the most important emerging problems in enterprise technology: securing AI agents and AI infrastructure operating at machine speed.

You'll work on systems that provide enterprises with real-time visibility and control over increasingly autonomous AI systems while solving difficult problems across distributed systems, security, machine learning, streaming infrastructure, and AI.

You'll operate as a true founding engineer, owning features end-to-end and shipping directly to enterprise customers within weeks.

If you enjoy building technically difficult systems from scratch, working directly with customers, solving novel AI and security problems, and operating with exceptional ownership in a high-intensity founding environment, this role offers exceptional technical scope and impact.