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# Founding Engineer

- **Company:** Q/RATA
- **Location:** Palo Alto, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $200,000.0 - $300,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Software Debugging, Distributed Systems, AI Infrastructure, Multi-Agent Systems, Backend, Production Code, Machine Learning Operations, Front End Software Development, Software Coding
- **Published:** June 24, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=33409812e41a6e71

## About the Role

Do you have experience in Startup experience?, * 10+ years of engineering experience, with strong startup or product company experience. (prior startup and consumer tech business experience is a MUST)

 * Must be a deeply hands-on engineer, writing code daily and constantly looking for ways to improve the codebase
 * Proven track record of building systems from zero to one.
 * Strong full-stack expertise across frontend, backend, cloud, data, and ideally AI/ML systems.
 * Strong product judgment and comfort making fast, pragmatic decisions.
 * Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
 * Experience operating in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

Nice to have

 * Prior founding engineer or early engineer experience.
 * Experience shipping AI-powered consumer products, personalization, or agentic systems.
 * Experience with modern AI infrastructure such as RAG, vector databases, or evaluation tooling.
 * Background in distributed systems, real-time infrastructure, or low-latency services.

## Description

We are looking for a Founding Engineer, who will help define and build the core product from the ground up. This is a true zero-to-one role for someone who thrives in ambiguity, moves quickly, and cares deeply about engineering craft, product quality, and long-term technical leverage.

You'll work closely with the founders, product, and design to architect, build, and ship the platform. You'll stay hands-on across the stack, make foundational technical decisions, and help shape both the product and engineering culture from day one.

What you'll do

 * Build and scale core product and platform systems from prototype to production.
 * Own major pieces of architecture, implementation, and execution.
 * Write production code every week and ship alongside the team.
 * Design APIs, debug live issues, build infrastructure, and improve developer velocity.
 * Make smart technical tradeoffs across frontend, backend, data, cloud, and AI infrastructure.
 * Partner directly with founders and cross-functional teammates to turn ambiguity into concrete execution.
 * Help establish lightweight engineering processes, reliability standards, and technical best practices.
 * Contribute to the hiring and growth of the engineering team as the company scales.


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