Founding Engineer
$160k - $270kClera
About the Role
This is a core infrastructure engineering role at a seed-stage AI infrastructure company building a graph-native context and memory layer for AI agents. You will own significant pieces of the platform, including the query engine, storage layer, and graph internals, working directly alongside the founding team to make architecture decisions that shape the product for years to come. This is a high-ownership, high-impact position with no feature-factory work.
What You'll Do
Own and ship core infrastructure components spanning query execution, the graph storage layer, and distributed systems.
Make architecture decisions with long-term product impact alongside the founding team.
Contribute to benchmark and research work that defines the technical category.
Participate in architecture reviews and work through hard technical trade-offs with real production consequences.
Help raise the technical ceiling as the team scales.
What We're Looking For
3+ years of relevant engineering experience with strong computer science fundamentals and a first-principles approach to problem-solving.
Proficiency in Rust or Go, or a strong drive to go deep in either language.
Hands-on experience designing and shipping core infrastructure such as query engines, storage layers, or graph internals in production.
Comfort owning large, ambiguous problems and contributing to design documents and architecture decisions in an early-stage environment.
Experience building or scaling distributed systems, databases, or storage infrastructure is a strong plus.
Open-source contributions to systems-level projects are a plus.
Prior founding engineer or early-stage infrastructure experience is a plus.
Compensation & Benefits
Base salary: $160,000 to $270,000 USD annually , plus meaningful equity. The company offers a learning budget, flexible PTO, and a wellness program. Visa sponsorship is not available.
Location
On-site in San Francisco, CA, United States .
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