Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer, CTO

New York City | On-site

$250,000-$300,000 + meaningful equity

Albert Bow are support an early stage start-up in NYC who are currently on the lookout for a Founding Engineer who is interested in finding a role to give them a clear pathway to CTO.

Our client is building an AI-powered product that connects contracts, documents, invoices and financial data to automate processes that remain heavily manual across large enterprises.

Now they’re looking for the person who can take ownership of the technology, help scale the platform and build the engineering function from the ground up, with a clear pathway to CTO.

The Opportunity

This is a hands-on Founding Engineer role.

You won’t be coming in to simply manage a team or spend your days in meetings. The engineering team is still small, which means you’ll be close to the technology, close to the product and close to the founders.

You’ll own the technical direction while continuing to build yourself.

That means:

• Setting the technical vision and architecture as the platform scales.
• Staying hands-on with engineering, coding and technical decision-making.
• Building scalable systems around AI, data and automation.
• Developing production-grade AI workflows, including LLM orchestration, RAG and evaluation frameworks.
• Solving complex problems around document processing, data extraction, search and retrieval.
• Building reliable data pipelines, enterprise integrations and multi-tenant infrastructure.
• Working closely with the founders on product and technical strategy.
• Helping shape the roadmap as the product and customer base grows.
• Establishing engineering standards and hiring exceptional engineers as the team expands.
• Working directly with customers and senior stakeholders when the technical conversation requires it.

There is a lot of ownership here.

You'll have a genuine say in what gets built, how it gets built and who you build it with , with the opportunity to grow into the CTO role as the business scales.

What We're Looking For

The background is more important than the job title.

You might be a:

Staff Engineer. Founding Engineer. Principal Engineer. Early-stage CTO.

What matters is that you've been close to the technology and have built things from the ground up.

We're looking for someone who has:

• A strong hands-on engineering background.
• Experience working in an early-stage or high-growth technology business.
• Strong architecture and system design experience.
• Experience building production-grade AI systems — not just prototypes.
• Knowledge of areas such as LLM orchestration, RAG, AI workflows and evaluation frameworks.
• Experience working with large volumes of structured and unstructured data.
• Strong understanding of enterprise software, including security, compliance, integrations and multi-tenancy.
• The ability to take ownership of technical decisions while working closely with founders and customers.
• An interest in building and leading an engineering team as the business grows.

From a technical perspective, experience across Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch and AWS/GCP would be highly relevant.

You don't need to tick every box.

We're more interested in what you've actually built and owned .

The Person

This is an early-stage business where you’ll stay hands-on, from solving architecture problems and building AI-powered workflows to shaping the roadmap with the founders. You’ll have real ownership, make key technical decisions and help build the engineering function from the ground up, with a clear path to CTO as the company grows.

Why This Role?

The company has reached the point where the technology works, customers are there and the opportunity is getting significantly bigger.

You’ll be joining at a stage where you can make a real impact on the product, the architecture and the direction of the business, with meaningful equity and the opportunity to grow into the CTO role.

Interested in hearing more? Get in touch with Christian Campbell at Albert Bow for more information!