Founding Engineer

Recruiting From Scratch • San Francisco, CA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

This is a Seed-stage AI startup building an agent workforce platform that helps enterprises build, deploy, and manage AI agents within their organizations. The platform enables companies to deploy agents with the permissions, guardrails, and activity logging needed to operate safely and effectively in enterprise environments. Early customers are already using the platform to automate several hours of work each day, demonstrating strong early product adoption. The company is backed by an early-stage venture fund with experience investing in high-impact technology companies. Founded in 2025, the company has a team of approximately seven employees and has raised $12.5 million in funding. As a Founding Engineer, you will help build the core application layer that enables enterprises to manage agent activity, permissions, observability, and user-facing workflows. You will work across the stack, from backend systems and APIs to frontend dashboards and infrastructure. This is a highly hands-on role for a product-minded engineer who wants to build rather than manage. You will own features end-to-end, work directly with early customers, make architecture and product decisions, and help scale the platform as adoption grows. The ideal candidate combines strong full-stack engineering skills with production intuition, a high degree of ownership, and the ability to build reliable systems in a fast-moving startup environment.

Requirements

• 3–7 years of professional full-stack software engineering experience.
• Experience building products at product-led technology companies.
• Experience owning features end-to-end, from concept through production.
• Strong product intuition and an understanding of production systems.
• Experience building applications used directly by customers or end users.
• Comfortable working in a small, fast-moving startup environment.
• Experience taking ownership of technical decisions with minimal oversight.
• Ability to work across frontend, backend, and infrastructure when needed.
• Interest in building AI-powered products and enterprise agent platforms.
• Strong TypeScript experience.
• Strong React experience.
• Experience with Next.js.
• Strong Node.js backend development experience.
• Experience building scalable APIs and backend systems.
• Experience with AWS or comparable cloud infrastructure.
• Familiarity with Terraform and infrastructure as code.
• Experience with Docker and containerized applications.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Understanding of application architecture, system design, and production deployment.
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills.
• Ability to make pragmatic architecture and technical tradeoff decisions.
• Strong interest in AI agents and agent-based software systems.
• Understanding of the infrastructure needed to deploy and manage AI agents in production.
• Interest in agent permissions, guardrails, activity logging, and observability.
• Experience building scalable and reliable production systems.
• Understanding of monitoring, logging, and production troubleshooting.
• Ability to design systems that can scale with growing user demand.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure, deployment workflows, and infrastructure automation.
• Experience building developer tooling or platform infrastructure is valuable.
• Ability to balance infrastructure reliability with rapid product iteration.
• Strong ability to work across frontend and backend systems.
• Experience building customer-facing applications with React, Next.js, and TypeScript.
• Experience designing and implementing backend APIs.
• Strong product intuition and an understanding of user workflows.
• Experience building features from concept through production.
• Comfortable making product and architecture decisions independently.
• Ability to work directly with customers to understand requirements.
• Strong production intuition and attention to reliability.
• Experience working on developer tools, enterprise software, or AI-powered applications is valuable.
• Ability to move between application development, infrastructure, and platform engineering as needed.
• Exceptional ownership and accountability.
• Highly proactive and self-directed.
• Strong product instincts.
• Comfortable operating without detailed specifications.
• Clear and direct communicator.
• Strong problem-solving skills.
• Comfortable working in a small, high-velocity team.
• Able to make independent technical decisions.
• Comfortable receiving feedback and iterating quickly.
• Willing to build rather than manage.
• Strong technical curiosity.
• Comfortable shifting priorities as the company evolves.
• High attention to production quality.
• Collaborative and team-oriented.
• Motivated by hard technical problems and meaningful ownership.

Nice To Haves

• Experience building developer tooling or platform infrastructure is valuable.
• Experience working on developer tools, enterprise software, or AI-powered applications is valuable.

Responsibilities

• Build & Own the Application Layer: Own the application layer of the platform, including observability, permissions, control panes, and user-facing dashboards. Build polished interfaces that allow enterprise users to manage and monitor AI agents. Develop frontend applications using React, Next.js, and TypeScript. Build features from concept and design through implementation, deployment, and launch. Ensure the application layer is reliable, secure, and intuitive for enterprise users. Work directly with early customers to understand workflows and improve the product. Maintain a high bar for production quality and user experience.
• Design Scalable APIs & Backend Systems: Design and build scalable APIs and backend services. Develop reliable application infrastructure using TypeScript and Node.js. Build systems that support agent permissions, activity logging, and enterprise controls. Make architecture decisions that support growing product usage and increasing system complexity. Develop developer tooling that makes it easier to build, deploy, and manage agents. Design systems that balance performance, security, reliability, and maintainability. Identify and resolve bottlenecks as the platform scales.
• Scale Agent Infrastructure & Production Systems: Help scale the infrastructure powering the agent workforce platform. Build and maintain cloud infrastructure using AWS. Work with Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes to support deployment and infrastructure management. Improve observability, monitoring, and production reliability. Build systems that can support growing customer demand and increased agent activity. Identify infrastructure bottlenecks and implement scalable solutions. Establish engineering practices that support reliable deployment and continued product growth.
• Work Directly With Customers & Own Problems End-to-End: Work directly with early customers to understand their needs and shape the product roadmap. Lead architecture and product decisions with a high degree of autonomy. Translate ambiguous customer problems into practical technical solutions. Own features from initial concept through production launch. Collaborate closely with the founding team to prioritize product and engineering work. Balance speed of execution with reliability, security, and product quality. Help establish engineering standards and technical practices as an early member of the team. Contribute hands-on wherever the highest-impact engineering problem exists.

Benefits

• $175,000 – $375,000 base salary range.
• Meaningful early-stage equity.
• Flexibility in the cash/equity split.
• Opportunity to join a Seed-stage AI startup.
• Significant ownership over the core application layer and platform infrastructure.
• Opportunity to work directly with founders and early customers.
• Visa transfers supported, including OPT and H-1B transfers.
• TN visa sponsorship available; other visa types considered case-by-case.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed