Founding Full-Stack Engineer (exclusive)

Recruiting From Scratch•Palo Alto, CA

11h•Onsite

About The Position

Our client is building an AI execution layer for consumer finance, transforming natural language intent into real financial actions. The company is developing technology that allows users to express financial theses in natural language and have AI agents translate those ideas into tested strategies that can ultimately be executed and settled across financial markets. The company is operating with a very small, highly technical founding team and is backed by leading technology and financial investors. As one of the first engineering hires, you'll have significant ownership over the product, technical architecture, engineering culture, and development practices from the ground up. This is an opportunity to work across conversational interfaces, AI agent loops, strategy execution infrastructure, financial integrations, and customer-facing product development while helping define what the company builds next.

Requirements

5+ years of professional software engineering experience
Backend-leaning full-stack engineering background
Experience working at high-quality, talent-dense startups
Proven experience owning products or major product areas end-to-end
Experience building and shipping customer-facing products
Experience operating in highly ambiguous startup environments
Experience taking products from concept through production
Strong product instincts and ability to determine what should be built
Experience making technical and product decisions independently
Experience working closely with founders or senior product leadership
Experience building systems where correctness, reliability, and execution quality matter
Strong ownership mentality with demonstrated execution ability
Comfortable owning multiple projects without a predefined queue of work
Strong full-stack engineering experience
Strong backend engineering fundamentals
Strong TypeScript experience
Strong Python experience
Experience building production web applications
Experience designing and building APIs and backend services
Strong software architecture and system design skills
Strong understanding of production reliability and scalability
Strong debugging and production troubleshooting capabilities
Ability to reason across frontend, backend, AI, infrastructure, and product systems
Ability to design systems that support real-time or transactional workflows
Strong understanding of engineering tradeoffs and technical decision-making
Ability to learn unfamiliar technical domains quickly
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field preferred
Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted
Strong computer science and software engineering fundamentals
Exceptional technical ownership
Strong product judgment
Strong analytical and problem-solving ability
Entrepreneurial and builder mentality
Strong first-principles thinking
Comfortable working with significant ambiguity
Strong communication skills
Comfortable working directly with founders
Comfortable independently identifying product opportunities
High execution velocity
Strong bias toward shipping
Strong ability to make pragmatic technical tradeoffs
Comfortable making decisions without extensive direction
Low-ego collaborative mentality
Strong customer and user orientation
Strong business intuition
Comfortable owning multiple projects simultaneously
Comfortable establishing engineering processes from scratch
Strong ability to operate independently
Strong willingness to work five days per week in Palo Alto
Strong interest in AI, fintech, financial markets, and agentic systems

Nice To Haves

Experience building financial, fintech, trading, or marketplace products preferred
Experience with AI-powered products or agentic systems preferred
Comfortable operating as one of the earliest engineers on a team
Experience building conversational or chat-based interfaces preferred
Experience working with AI agents or LLM-powered applications preferred
Experience building agentic workflows preferred
Experience designing strategy execution or workflow orchestration systems preferred
Experience integrating external APIs and financial platforms preferred
Experience working with exchanges, financial markets, prediction markets, or blockchain infrastructure preferred

Responsibilities

Own the product surface end-to-end from initial concept through production deployment
Build conversational interfaces that allow users to express financial theses and intent in natural language
Develop chat-first product experiences with artifact panes and interactive workflows
Build AI agent loops that translate user intent into tested financial strategies
Design and build strategy execution infrastructure that takes proposed strategies into live execution
Build systems that connect strategies to exchanges, prediction markets, and on-chain venues
Own end-to-end product flows spanning frontend experiences, backend systems, AI agents, and execution infrastructure
Take product ideas from initial sketches through implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration
Hunt for product opportunities and identify what the platform should build next
Independently define technical scope and propose product improvements
Own multiple projects simultaneously from genesis through completion
Make architecture and technical decisions across the full product stack
Establish engineering protocols, development workflows, and code review practices
Help define engineering standards and culture for the growing technical organization
Build reliable infrastructure for financial strategy execution and settlement
Integrate new asset classes into the platform end-to-end
Design APIs, backend services, product interfaces, and agent workflows
Work closely with founders to translate product vision into shipped software
Operate with a high degree of autonomy and minimal predefined process
Make pragmatic technical decisions in highly ambiguous environments
Balance shipping velocity with reliability, correctness, and production quality
Identify when additional engineering support is required and help build the team to support it
Continuously improve product architecture, engineering processes, and user experience

Benefits

Base Salary: $200,000 – $650,000
Competitive equity package
Opportunity to be one of the first three engineering hires
Significant ownership over product architecture and technical direction
Opportunity to build AI-powered financial execution infrastructure from the ground up
Direct collaboration with founders
Opportunity to shape engineering culture, standards, and development practices
Exposure to AI agents, financial markets, and automated strategy execution
Opportunity to build products connecting natural language with real-world financial action
High-impact early-stage environment with significant technical and product ownership
Opportunity to own multiple products and systems end-to-end
Visa transfer support
O-1 visa sponsorship available