About the Role
A YC-backed enterprise AI SaaS startup is looking for a Founding Engineer to join their small, high-output team in San Francisco. The company is building an agentic operating system for the enterprise, with thousands of agents already deployed at scale-up startups and enterprise companies. They have strong product-market fit and are growing revenue rapidly month-over-month.
This is a founding-level role with CTO-level expectations. You'll take vague problems, scope them, build them end-to-end, and ship things that create real value — with no hand-holding and no waiting for specs. You need to be a full-stack engineer, an AI engineer, and a product engineer rolled into one. Former founders are especially encouraged to apply.
What You'll Do
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Own large parts of the product end-to-end — from user insight all the way to production
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Build and continuously improve agentic systems: accuracy, reliability, and capability
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Work at the frontier of AI engineering — context engineering, tool use, agent architectures
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Talk to users, understand their pain points, and scope features that genuinely solve problems
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Ship full-stack when needed (Go backend, Vite + React + TypeScript frontend)
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Champion AI-first development practices — coding agents, automation, and self-scaling workflows
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Review code quickly while maintaining high standards across the codebase
What We're Looking For
Must-haves (dealbreakers):
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Proven production experience building backend services in Go (Golang)
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Authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship
Required skills:
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Experience building frontend applications with React and TypeScript
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Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, deployment workflows, and production monitoring/observability
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Experience building and consuming REST and/or gRPC APIs in microservices architectures
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0–3 years of professional software engineering experience (full-stack or equivalent)
Strong pluses:
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Prior startup experience or time as a founding/early engineer
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Experience building AI-driven products — agentic systems, LLMs, prompt engineering, or agent orchestration
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Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or equivalent) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
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Experience with relational (Postgres/MySQL) and NoSQL databases
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AI research background or experience at an AI coding or tooling startup
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Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
You'll thrive here if you:
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Have razor-sharp problem-solving instincts and move fast without sacrificing quality
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Love Go and care about clean, maintainable code
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Are obsessed with AI-first development tools (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, coding agents)
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Thrive in ambiguity — you don't need a PM to tell you what to build
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Have built something from scratch before: a startup, a side project, or a feature that shipped and mattered
Compensation & Benefits
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Salary: $120,000 – $250,000 USD annually
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Generous equity reflecting the outsized impact of this founding role
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Unlimited AI tooling budget
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A true seat at the table — you'll shape the product and the company's direction
Location
This role is on-site in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. Visa sponsorship is not available.
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