About the Role
A well-funded, stealth-stage consumer tech startup is building an AI-powered map and social discovery platform — helping people figure out where to go, what to do, and who to go with. The company has assembled one of the largest structured indices of real-world places and events (200M+ places, millions of events) and is now building an intelligent, social product experience on top of it.
They're looking for a Founding Engineer to join on-site in San Francisco. This is a rare opportunity to shape core systems and product from the ground up alongside the founding team.
What You'll Do
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Design and ship product features and backend systems from zero to production
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Work directly with founders on product direction and architecture decisions
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Own end-to-end problems — not just contribute to them
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Move fluidly across the stack: frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI
Example problems you might work on:
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Ranking what someone should do tonight using embeddings, structured data, and social signals
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Pushing Elasticsearch + vector search to sub-100ms latency across massive datasets
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Building real-time systems (chat, presence, location) that feel genuinely instantaneous
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Designing map display algorithms that surface what deserves attention
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Building agent pipelines that plan queries and synthesize well-informed answers
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Structuring unstructured web data to power novel discovery experiences
Areas of Focus
Most engineers here won't fit neatly into one track — and that's the point.
Application Engineer (Full-Stack)
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Build fast, expressive interfaces across mobile (iOS/Android) and web
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Own features end-to-end from UI through backend
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Work deeply on rendering performance and interaction design
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Stack: TypeScript, React, React Native, iOS/Android
Data / AI Engineer
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Build the intelligence layer: search, ranking, pipelines, and agent systems
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Design systems that operate over large-scale, messy real-world data
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Work with LLMs, embeddings, and retrieval/recommendation systems
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Stack: Python and/or TypeScript, Elasticsearch, Snowflake, LLMs
What We're Looking For
Required:
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0–5 years of professional software engineering experience
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Based in San Francisco or willing to relocate — on-site presence is required
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Eligible to work in the United States without visa sponsorship
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Proven experience building real-time and/or low-latency systems
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Proficiency in search and ranking algorithms and systems
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Experience with data processing pipelines, data engineering, or ML/AI workflows
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Experience with infrastructure and performance optimization for production environments
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Prior early-stage startup experience; comfortable operating with high ambiguity
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Ability to collaborate across product, design, and engineering with full end-to-end ownership
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Strong problem-solving and decision-making skills in fast-paced environments
Strong signals (not hard requirements):
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You've built something technically ambitious end-to-end
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You have exceptional problem-solving ability — systems, math, or both
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You move fast and don't need much structure to do great work
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You care about taste — not just whether something works, but how it feels
This role is not a fit if you:
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Prefer clearly scoped, structured tasks
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Are a single-domain specialist unwilling to stretch across the stack
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Require a remote arrangement
Compensation & Benefits
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Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually (depending on experience)
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Early equity in a well-funded, high-conviction consumer AI startup
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Direct impact on product, architecture, and company direction from day one
Location
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San Francisco, CA — on-site required
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Relocation considered for exceptional candidates
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No visa sponsorship available; must be authorized to work in the United States
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