Founding Engineer
$175k - $225kClera
Job Description
Job Description
About the Role
This is a rare, high-impact founding engineer position at an early-stage consumer AI startup building a real-time, AI-enabled platform to digitize human connection. You'll work directly alongside the founder — a Thiel Fellow — as one of the first engineers, shaping both the product and the engineering culture from the ground up. This is a fully on-site role in San Francisco .
You'll take on broad technical ownership across a bold consumer product focused on scalable, meaningful human interactions — integrating cutting-edge real-time video, audio, and memory systems.
What You'll DoWork across all aspects of the application alongside the founder, designers, and other engineers.
Build new systems for memory, retrieval, proactivity, and AI responsiveness.
Integrate the latest internal and external real-time video generation and audio synthesis models.
Set the bar for engineering quality and help recruit world-class talent to the team.
Dogfood the product extensively — you genuinely care about real user value and quality.
Required:
2–7 years of software engineering experience (not a new grad — some professional engineering experience is required).
Computer Science degree from a top-tier university.
Strong CS fundamentals.
High energy, exceptionally bright, and driven to build fast.
Proven entrepreneurial spirit — startup exposure or experience in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
Track record of technically complex side projects or independent builds.
Comfortable with — and excited by — early-stage chaos and the demands of a founding team environment.
Nice to Have:
Experience with real-time media, vision or video models, audio synthesis, or voice systems.
Experience with memory and retrieval systems or agentic AI architectures.
Proficiency in Python, including typed scientific Python.
Familiarity with AI-assisted or agentic development tooling.
Salary: $175,000 – $225,000 per year
Equity as a founding team member
Visa sponsorship available
This role is fully on-site in San Francisco, CA . Candidates must be willing and able to work in-person full-time. Remote work is not available for this position.
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