Founding Engineer

Pear VC
Palo Alto, United States of America
3 days ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English
Compensation
$ 200K

Job location

Palo Alto, United States of America

Tech stack

Continuous Integration
Software Debugging
PostgreSQL
Next.js
TypeScript
React
Large Language Models
Electron (Programming Language)
Production Code
Web Api

Job description

This is not a typical engineering role. You'll be our founding engineer, with an outsized role in how the product, company, and engineering culture evolve.

You'll write code, but you'll also:

  • Talk to customers and join pilot calls
  • Turn feedback into product changes the same week
  • Influence the roadmap directly
  • Help close deals by building what matters fast
  • Own features end-to-end, from prototype to production

In your first 90 days, you'll:

  • Ship production code to real pilot customers in your first weeks
  • Build the core product surfaces: employee-facing guidance UX and manager dashboard
  • Work across the stack (TypeScript, React, Next.js, Postgres, Electron/Tauri)
  • Wire up LLM features that actually work in production, not just in a demo
  • Set up the telemetry and eval systems that make our insights credible

Requirements

Do you have experience in TypeScript?, * Shipping full-stack production-ready products in fast-moving environments

  • Strong with TypeScript, React, Next.js, backend APIs, and Postgres
  • Comfortable building across web and desktop (Electron, Tauri, or similar)
  • Has built LLM-powered features in production, not just prototyped with them
  • Production habits: CI/CD, testing, observability, pragmatic system design
  • Native with AI coding agents (Claude Code/Codex)
  • Obsessive about customer needs, not just abstract "users"
  • Comfortable debugging, writing tests, talking to customers, and jumping on a pilot call

Bonus: Experience with building browser-based automation tools or developer/enterprise tools.

Benefits & conditions

$140,000 - $200,000 a year - Full-time, * Own large product surface areas end-to-end

  • Help convert pilots into paying contracts with your product work
  • Drive the reliability and quality bar that enterprise buyers expect
  • Start shaping engineering culture and hiring as we grow the team

In 12 months, you'll:

  • Architect key parts of the system
  • Be known by name to our biggest customers
  • Opportunity to lead engineering as we scale past our seed round

Competitive salary, meaningful early equity, and the chance to grow into an engineering leadership role as we scale., * Your GitHub

  • Your Resume
  • 2 to 3 links to things you've shipped (projects, products, demos, write-ups)
  • A short note on the most impressive thing you've built

Compensation Range: $140K - $200K

About the company

Companies have spent billions on AI tools and tokens. Almost none of them can prove it's working. 95% of organizations report zero measurable return from their AI investments. Not because the tools are bad, but because nobody redesigned the workflows, coached the teams, or measured what actually changed. Modo is the AI success layer for the enterprise. We sit inside the flow of work, capture how teams actually use AI, guide them in the moment, and give leaders the ROI analytics to understand which AI tools and workflows are actually creating value. Today, Modo helps companies drive AI adoption and prove ROI inside real workflows. As we capture more workflow context, Modo becomes the layer understanding how work actually gets done across teams, tools, and AI, which allows companies to build proprietary custom agents grounded in their own workflows. In 8 weeks, we reached 7-figure ARR committed across multiple clients and pilots, 10+ enterprise leads in pipeline, and an 80% demo-to-pilot conversion rate. The pull is real. We raised from One Way Ventures, Pear VC, Peterson Ventures, and a strong group of institutional investors and strategic operators. Now we need to build fast enough to match customer demand., You'll join Johnny Chang (Stanford top AI agent research, taught most Stanford AI flagship courses with professors like Andrew Ng) and Angelina You (Meta data science, Stanford MS Eng, product growth at CircleCI) as the founding engineer. Product, engineering, and customer work all run through the same room. We're backed by One Way Ventures, Pear VC, Peterson Ventures, and many more institutional funds and strategic angels. Why Modo * Founding team member. Shape culture, product, and technology from the ground up. * Real ownership. Your code ships to enterprise customers from week one. * Leadership trajectory. Designed to grow into a leading engineering role. * Traction. In 8 weeks, we reached 7-figure ARR committed across 2 clients, with 3 active pilots and 10+ enterprise opportunities in pipeline. * In-person around SF. We believe great teams build faster together. * Competitive pay + early equity. Rewarded for the outsized impact you'll have.

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