Founding Engineer

Date Posted:
IT & Tech
Full Time

Job Title: Founding Engineer - GenAI Startup- only 3-5 years exp needed if the right calibre

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite, 5 Days/Week)

Compensation: Up to $230,000 + Generous Equity Package

About Us:

We're a stealth-mode startup in San Francisco, building transformative applications at the edge of Generative AI. We're backed by top-tier investors and looking for a sharp, hands-on Founding Engineer to help shape our product, infrastructure, and culture from the ground up.

The Role:

As a Founding Engineer, you'll be at the heart of everything - architecture, code, product strategy, and scaling. You'll work directly with the founding team to rapidly build and iterate on products powered by LLM APIs and GenAI models. This is a rare chance to join at zero-to-one and leave your fingerprint on a high-impact venture.

What You'll Do:

  • Design and build production-grade GenAI features and infrastructure
  • Work with LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere) to deliver real-world applications
  • Own and ship full-stack features using Python, JavaScript, and TypeScript
  • Help make early tech decisions, set engineering standards, and build internal tooling
  • Contribute actively to model experimentation, prompt engineering, and fine-tuning
  • Collaborate closely with product and design to iterate quickly

Requirements:

  • 3-5 years of hands-on software engineering experience
  • Strong startup experience - you've thrived in fast, ambiguous environments
  • Active GitHub or portfolio of personal/open-source projects
  • Deep experience with LLMs / GenAI APIs (OpenAI, Claude, etc.)
  • Fluency in Python and front-end technologies (JavaScript/TypeScript, React preferred)
  • Comfortable working onsite in San Francisco, 5 days a week
  • Excited by the builder mentality - shipping fast, learning faster

Nice to Have:

  • Experience deploying ML models or working with vector databases
  • Contributions to open-source GenAI projects
  • Previous early-stage or founding engineer experience

Why Join Us:

  • Shape the tech, team, and trajectory from day one
  • Competitive salary + meaningful equity
  • Direct access to cutting-edge AI tools and top-tier advisors
  • Build something truly original - fast, lean, and high-impact