Founding Full-Stack Engineer

About the job Founding Full-Stack Engineer


Founding Full-Stack Product Engineer (AI-Native)

On-Site | San Francisco | Full-Time
$160K-$220K base + meaningful equity
H-1B transfers supported

The Bar

This is a founding engineer seat at an early-stage AI company building core infrastructure for LLM-powered systems.

If you need tight requirements, stable roadmaps, or a slow ramp, this is not the role.

If you ship fast, think clearly, and believe AI-native development changes how software should be built - keep reading.

What Youll Own

• End-to-end product engineering: backend, frontend, infrastructure
• AI-driven product features (context engineering, internal GenAI tooling)
• Telemetry, observability, and system intelligence
• Direct interaction with founders and early customers
• Fast iteration under incomplete information

You will regularly switch between products, systems, and customer realities. That's the job.

Non-Negotiables

• 5+ years building and shipping real products as a full-stack engineer
• Strong backend bias (60/40 backend/frontend)
• Production experience with TypeScript, Node, Next.js
• Startup experience where priorities changed weekly - and you still shipped
• You actively use AI tools in your daily workflow (not interested in learning)
• Clear, concise communicator - in writing and conversation

Strong Signals

• Seed to Series A startup experience
• Experience with developer tooling, telemetry, or infra-adjacent systems
• Public technical thinking (blog, GitHub, X, talks)
• Evidence of learning velocity over pedigree

Red Flags (We Will Screen Out)

• Long resumes with vague impact
• Pure big-tech backgrounds without recent startup experience
• Engineers are optimized for promotion cycles instead of ownership
• Low-intensity, low-urgency working styles
• Candidates who talk about AI but don't use it

Environment

• In-person, 5 days/week in San Francisco
• High-trust, high-expectation culture
• Not a 9-5 shop - consistency and output matter
• Small senior team, direct founder access

Interview Process

1. Founder screen (~15 minutes)
2. Final on-site loop (up to 4 hours)

Outcome

Best case: you help define a category and build systems that scale with AI.
Worst case: you leave with elite experience, a powerful network, and accelerated growth.