Founding Engineer

Recruiting From Scratch•Brooklyn, NY

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our client is building AI-native software for freight brokers, helping independent freight agencies reduce operational workload and scale their businesses more efficiently. The company is targeting the large and underserved freight brokerage market, where independent operators manage significant books of business using fragmented and outdated software systems. The company is backed by experienced operators who have previously built and scaled successful businesses and is operating as a small, highly technical early-stage team. As a Founding Engineer, you'll have significant ownership over the company's technical foundation and AI stack, working directly with leadership and customers to build products that automate critical freight brokerage workflows. This is an opportunity to join a true founding engineering team where you'll work across AI agents, full-stack product development, infrastructure, fraud prevention, and customer-facing workflows.

Requirements

5+ years of professional experience in full-stack software engineering
Strong experience working at early-stage startups
Experience building and shipping products end-to-end
Experience building AI/LLM-powered products in production
Experience developing agentic workflows or AI-powered automation
Experience owning technical architecture decisions on small teams
Experience operating production software with real users
Experience working in highly ambiguous startup environments
Experience collaborating closely with product and business leadership
Strong ownership mentality with demonstrated execution ability
Comfortable taking products from concept through deployment and iteration
Strong full-stack engineering experience
Strong backend and frontend development skills
Experience building production applications using LLMs
Experience with AI agents and agentic workflows
Experience integrating LLM APIs into customer-facing products
Strong understanding of AI application architecture
Experience with APIs and backend services
Experience with deployment and cloud infrastructure
Experience setting up CI/CD pipelines and engineering tooling
Experience with DevOps and production infrastructure
Strong software architecture and systems thinking
Strong debugging and production troubleshooting capabilities
Ability to work with a technology stack that is not rigidly prescribed
Ability to learn and adopt new technologies quickly
Strong understanding of production reliability and scalability
Strong software engineering and systems fundamentals
Exceptional technical ownership
Strong analytical and problem-solving ability
Deep curiosity around AI and emerging technologies
Strong product mindset
Comfortable working with significant ambiguity
Strong communication skills
Comfortable collaborating directly with founders and product leadership
High execution velocity
Strong bias toward shipping
Strong ability to reason from first principles
Comfortable making technical decisions independently
Low-ego collaborative mentality
Strong builder mentality
Comfortable wearing multiple hats on a small team
Strong business and customer orientation
Comfortable operating in a high-intensity startup environment

Nice To Haves

Experience as a founding engineer or early engineering team member preferred
Experience working directly with customers or end users preferred
Logistics, supply chain, or freight industry experience is a strong plus
Comfortable working across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI systems
Experience building fraud detection or rules-based prevention systems preferred
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field preferred
Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted
Strong willingness to work in-person four days per week in Brooklyn

Responsibilities

Own the AI stack powering freight brokerage workflows
Build AI agents and agentic workflows for production use
Develop carrier sales automation systems
Build AI-powered quoting and workflow automation systems
Build email triage, routing, and automation workflows using LLMs
Design and implement production AI integrations using modern LLM technologies
Set the technical foundation for the engineering organization from the ground up
Make architecture decisions across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI systems
Establish deployment infrastructure, tooling, CI/CD, and engineering practices
Build fraud prevention systems to detect and mitigate load theft across multiple fraud vectors
Develop rules-based and AI-assisted fraud detection workflows
Build and ship full-stack products end-to-end
Work closely with freight brokers to understand their workflows and operational challenges
Join customer calls and observe users directly to identify product opportunities
Translate customer problems into technical solutions and shipped software
Partner closely with product leadership to determine what to build, buy, or integrate
Own projects from initial concept through production deployment and operation
Build reliable APIs, backend services, frontend experiences, and AI workflows
Move quickly from prototypes to production with tight customer feedback loops
Operate with high ownership and autonomy in a small startup environment
Help establish engineering culture, technical standards, and development processes
Contribute to product direction and broader business decisions
Work across the stack as priorities evolve
Continuously improve the reliability, quality, and performance of production systems