Founding Engineer

numi is partnered with an early-stage, venture-backed AI company based in New York City that is building an AI platform helping architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms find and win more work automating the discovery of relevant government and private-sector opportunities, and using AI to accelerate proposal writing and project analysis. The company is backed by two of the most respected names in venture, and is at the stage where the next hire will shape the engineering culture, not just execute inside it.

They're hiring their Founding Engineer, reporting directly to the CTO/Co-founder. This is a hands-on build role at a small, early-stage team there is no large engineering org to lean on, and no layer of process between an idea and it shipping. The right person will own meaningful parts of the product end to end, from backend infrastructure through to the AI systems that sit at the core of what the company does.

What you'll be doing

• Building and owning core backend services in Python/FastAPI, deployed on Google Cloud Run, with Pub/Sub handling asynchronous processing
• Working directly with Supabase Postgres and pgvector to power retrieval and search across the product's data
• Building and maintaining the React/TypeScript/Vite/Tailwind frontend
• Designing and orchestrating LLM-driven workflows across multiple providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google Vertex/Gemini), using tool-use agent frameworks to build reliable, production-grade AI features
• Operating with real ownership shaping technical decisions, not just implementing someone else's spec

What you'll bring

• Hands-on, recent experience with a comparable modern stack: Python/FastAPI backends, cloud-native deployment (GCP Cloud Run or equivalent), Postgres-based data layers (Supabase and/or pgvector experience is a strong plus), and a modern React/TypeScript frontend
• Real experience building with LLMs in production not just calling an API, but orchestrating tool-use across multiple model providers
• A track record of operating with high ownership in a small, early-stage environment, comfortable being the person who decides how something gets built, not just how it gets implemented
• Based in New York City, or willing to relocate this is an in-office role, five days a week, with no remote or hybrid flexibility
• Already holding US work authorization the company is not able to sponsor a visa for this role

Nice to have

• Founding engineer experience at a YC-backed (or similarly-backed) early-stage startup

Logistics

• Location: New York City, in-office five days a week (non-negotiable)