Founding Engineer - Full Stack

About the role

A Y Combinator-backed AI startup is looking for a Founding Engineer - Full Stack to join a small founding team at the ground floor. The company operates at the intersection of AI research, product, and engineering - building tools that help brands understand and shape how large language models perceive and represent them. This is a rare opportunity to co-define engineering culture and practices from day one in a fast-moving, high-impact environment.

Responsibilities

• Own problems end-to-end - from customer insight and product requirements all the way through research and infrastructure.
• Maintain a tight feedback loop with customers and the founding team; ship features quickly and iteratively.
• Help define and shape the engineering team's culture, patterns, and best practices.
• Continuously explore and reinvent how engineering teams work effectively alongside AI agents.

Requirements

• Required
• 1+ years of experience on engineering teams (2+ preferred), including at least one stint longer than 18 months in a strong startup or scale-up environment.
• Full-stack proficiency - comfortable owning customer-facing UI through to infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience with React, Python, Terraform, and AWS .
• Experience building agentic systems or working with LLMs in production.
• Strong product sense and design instincts; able to translate customer needs into shippable features.
• Startup experience or self-driven personal projects that demonstrate initiative and high agency.
• Must be a US citizen or have US work authorization (no visa sponsorship for candidates outside the US).
• Scientific or academic research background.
• Direct customer-facing experience in a technical role.
• Enthusiasm for adopting AI-powered coding and productivity tools.
• Compensation & Benefits
• Salary: $150,000 - $250,000 USD annually (depending on experience)
• Early-stage equity
• Visa sponsorship available for eligible candidates
• Location
• This role is on-site in San Francisco, CA . Candidates must be based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco.

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