Founding Full-Stack Engineer

Recruiting From Scratch•San Francisco, CA

4d•Onsite

About The Position

This is an early-stage AI company building an AI-native legal platform designed to fundamentally improve how legal work is delivered to fast-growing technology companies. The company is building both the technology and the operational infrastructure around an AI-native approach to legal services. Its platform supports legal teams with AI-powered document review, intelligent drafting, legal research, case management, and conversational AI workflows. The engineering team is extremely small, giving engineers significant influence over architecture, product direction, and execution. You will work across the entire stack, from PostgreSQL and Node.js on the backend to React and Next.js on the frontend, while also building agentic systems and the infrastructure required to make them reliable. As a Founding Full-Stack Engineer, you will work directly with lawyers who use the product every day. You will identify problems, scope solutions, ship features end-to-end, and receive immediate feedback from real users. This is a highly hands-on founding-level role for someone who enjoys building from scratch, working across the stack, and taking ownership without waiting for detailed specifications. Your work will directly shape the product, engineering culture, and technical foundation of the company.

Requirements

3–7 years of professional software engineering experience.
Strong full-stack engineering background with meaningful ownership across frontend and backend systems.
Experience building and shipping production software end-to-end.
Experience working in a startup, high-growth company, or highly autonomous engineering environment.
Demonstrated ability to take ambiguous requirements and turn them into production-ready products.
Experience owning projects from initial concept through deployment and iteration.
Strong interest in AI-powered products and agentic systems.
Comfortable working as an early engineer where responsibilities extend beyond a narrowly defined role.
Strong TypeScript experience.
Strong Node.js backend development experience.
Strong React and Next.js experience.
Experience working with PostgreSQL and relational databases.
Experience building APIs and backend services.
Experience with modern application architecture and full-stack development.
Experience working with cloud infrastructure, ideally AWS.
Experience with distributed or asynchronous workflows is valuable.
Familiarity with technologies such as tRPC and Temporal is a plus.
Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills.
Ability to make pragmatic architecture and technical tradeoff decisions.
Hands-on experience building AI/LLM-powered applications.
Understanding of agentic systems and AI application architecture.
Experience building agent interfaces, orchestration, evaluation, or supporting infrastructure.
Experience designing reliable AI-powered workflows.
Understanding of AI evaluation, observability, testing, or failure handling.
Ability to reason about the reliability and limitations of AI systems in production.
Strong interest in rapidly evolving AI technologies and their practical application to real products.
Strong ability to move between frontend, backend, database, and infrastructure work.
Experience building polished user-facing applications.
Experience designing APIs and integrating third-party systems.
Experience working with complex workflows and data-heavy applications.
Strong product sense and ability to translate user problems into technical solutions.
Experience working directly with users or customers is strongly preferred.
Comfortable owning both technical implementation and product decisions.
Ability to balance speed of execution with long-term maintainability.
Exceptional ownership and accountability.
Highly proactive and self-directed.
Comfortable operating without detailed specifications.
Strong product instincts.
Clear and direct communicator.
Strong problem-solving mindset.
Comfortable receiving immediate feedback and iterating quickly.
Able to work closely with founders and other early employees.
Comfortable shifting priorities as the company evolves.
Strong attention to detail.
High technical curiosity.
Strong startup mentality and willingness to build from scratch.

Nice To Haves

Experience with distributed or asynchronous workflows is valuable.
Familiarity with technologies such as tRPC and Temporal is a plus.

Responsibilities

Build and iterate on agentic systems that support real-world legal workflows.
Develop agent harnesses, evaluations, interfaces, and supporting infrastructure.
Design systems that are reliable enough for legal professionals to trust and use in production.
Improve agent performance through evaluation, observability, testing, and iteration.
Work with modern AI systems and integrate them deeply into product workflows.
Build the technical infrastructure required to make AI-powered features reliable at scale.
Ship full-stack features from database and backend services through frontend user interfaces.
Build client-facing product surfaces and internal tools used by legal professionals.
Develop lawyer workspace functionality including review queues, document comparison and redline views, AI chat, and workflow tools.
Work across PostgreSQL, Node.js, TypeScript, React, Next.js, and cloud infrastructure.
Make architectural and technical decisions across the full application stack.
Take features from initial problem definition through production deployment.
Build integrations with Slack, email, document management, e-signature, billing, and other third-party platforms.
Design reliable APIs and services that connect the product to external systems.
Improve observability, infrastructure, testing, and operational reliability.
Work with technologies such as AWS, tRPC, and Temporal.
Build systems that support complex, asynchronous, AI-powered workflows.
Identify opportunities to simplify architecture and improve engineering velocity.
Work directly with lawyers and legal professionals who use the product.
Scope problems alongside users and quickly turn feedback into working product improvements.
Collaborate closely with the founding team on product direction and technical priorities.
Take initiative without waiting for detailed specifications.
Balance product quality, engineering velocity, and real customer needs.
Own projects from ambiguous initial requirements through implementation, launch, and iteration.
Help establish engineering standards and technical culture as an early member of the team.