Founding Engineer

About the Role A well-funded, stealth-stage consumer tech startup is building an AI-powered map and social discovery platform — helping people figure out where to go, what to do, and who to go with. The company has assembled one of the largest structured indices of real-world places and events (200M+ 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 the founding team. What You'll Do Design and ship product features and backend systems from zero to production Work directly with founders on product direction and architecture decisions Own end-to-end problems — not just contribute to them Move fluidly across the stack: frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI Example problems you might work on: Ranking what someone should do tonight using embeddings, structured data, and social signals Pushing Elasticsearch + vector search to sub-100ms latency across massive datasets Building real-time systems (chat, presence, location) that feel genuinely instantaneous Designing map display algorithms that surface what deserves attention Building agent pipelines that plan queries and synthesize well-informed answers Structuring unstructured web data to power novel discovery experiences Areas of Focus Most engineers here won't fit neatly into one track — and that's the point. Application Engineer (Full-Stack) Build fast, expressive interfaces across mobile (iOS/Android) and web Own features end-to-end from UI through backend Work deeply on rendering performance and interaction design Stack: TypeScript, React, React Native, iOS/Android Data / AI Engineer Build the intelligence layer: search, ranking, pipelines, and agent systems Design systems that operate over large-scale, messy real-world data Work with LLMs, embeddings, and retrieval/recommendation systems Stack: Python and/or TypeScript, Elasticsearch, Snowflake, LLMs What We're Looking For Required: 0–5 years of professional software engineering experience Based in San Francisco or willing to relocate — on-site presence is required Eligible to work in the United States without visa sponsorship Proven experience building real-time and/or low-latency systems Proficiency in search and ranking algorithms and systems Experience with data processing pipelines, data engineering, or ML/AI workflows Experience with infrastructure and performance optimization for production environments Prior early-stage startup experience; comfortable operating with high ambiguity Ability to collaborate across product, design, and engineering with full end-to-end ownership Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills in fast-paced environments Strong signals (not hard requirements): You've built something technically ambitious end-to-end You have exceptional problem-solving ability — systems, math, or both You move fast and don't need much structure to do great work You care about taste — not just whether something works, but how it feels This role is not a fit if you: Prefer clearly scoped, structured tasks Are a single-domain specialist unwilling to stretch across the stack Require a remote arrangement Compensation & Benefits Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually (depending on experience) Early equity in a well-funded, high-conviction consumer AI startup Direct impact on product, architecture, and company direction from day one Location San Francisco, CA — on-site required Relocation considered for exceptional candidates No visa sponsorship available; must be authorized to work in the United States