Founding Engineer (Forward-Deployed)
$160k - $230kDavid Joseph & Company
Founding Engineer (Forward-Deployed)
Location: San Francisco, CA · On-site
Compensation: $160K–$230K base + competitive equity
Seniority: 2+ years as a full-stack or backend-leaning engineer
Openings: 2–3
Visa: Sponsorship available; transfers considered case by case
About Our Client
Our client builds AI agents that modernize manufacturing by automating complex procurement workflows. They replace outdated email and Excel processes with autonomous systems that optimize global supply chains.
It's a high-growth team backed by a top-tier VC, working to define the future of industrial AI. You'll work directly with deeply technical founders to shape the company's technical and strategic direction.
About the Role
Our client is building a small, talent-dense team to deploy AI agents into the most critical supply chains in the world. They need end-to-end engineers who can go from a customer's factory floor to shipping production code in the same week.
What you'll do
- Deploy forward with customers and embed with procurement and supply chain teams to understand their hardest operational problems firsthand
- Translate real-world insights into product and infrastructure features that meaningfully improve the platform
- Own entire workstreams end-to-end, from scoping through deployment
- Work closely with the founders to define the technical and strategic direction of the company
- Set the standard for what agentic supply chain software looks like
What We're Looking For
Experience
- 2+ years as a full-stack or backend-leaning engineer
- Has shipped code to production in a professional capacity and owned real stakeholder outcomes
- Experience at an early-stage startup or a prestigious larger company
- Forward-deployed engineering experience, or experience at a company with a strong forward-deployed engineering motion
- Domain experience in supply chain or procurement
Education
- CS or equivalent technical degree, ideally from a strong program (e.g., Berkeley, Purdue)
Hard skills
- Proficient in Python (bonus for TypeScript and React)
- Regular user of AI coding assistants (e.g., Copilot, Cursor)
- Experience building with or deploying LLMs / AI models
Other requirements
- A verifiable signal of excellence (prestigious company, notable achievements, hackathon wins, etc.)
- Willing to travel every 1–2 months, including international travel
Not a fit
- Career stagnation or lack of significant impact in prior roles
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