Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer - engineer number one. You’re not joining a team; you’re helping build one. This is a high-ownership role: you help decide what gets built, how it gets built, and what gets prioritized as a fast-moving market evolves. Nobody has fully figured this market out yet, and that ambiguity is the opportunity.

What you’ll be doing

• Build incrementality and attribution systems tied to revenue outcomes for e-commerce brands
• Scale browser orchestration and retrieval infrastructure across AI commerce surfaces
• Make core workflows reliable with better queues, retries, and observability
• Adapt the product to emerging agentic commerce protocols and new platform launches
• Build AI agents, MCP servers, and new product surfaces across emerging verticals
• Own the full stack frontend to backend, work in tight feedback loops with customers, and shape engineering culture and architecture from day one

Tech stack: TypeScript, Node.js, Express, React, Next.js; Postgres, Redis, queues / async jobs; browser automation & retrieval infrastructure; LLM APIs, AI agents, MCP servers, * Genuine founding seat: shape architecture, culture, and product direction from day one

• A market at an inflection point, with real runway behind it
• Direct daily collaboration with the founder and meaningful founding equity

Do you have experience in TypeScript?, * 3 to 7 years software engineering at a high-signal company

• TypeScript and Node.js proficiency
• AI agent and LLM API experience in production
• Full-stack product development capability
• Founding engineer mindset, high agency and high ownership
• In-person San Francisco

Green Flags

• Background at a high-signal YC Series A to B company
• Has worked at Scale AI, a top YC company, or a fast-moving early-stage startup where they had real ownership and shipped meaningful product
• Has built AI agents or LLM-powered workflows in production, not just experimented locally
• Has the profile of someone who would be or has been a founder, takes ownership of outcomes not just tasks
• Top school or exceptional engineering pedigree that signals deep technical ability even with fewer years of experience
• Active user of AI-native development tools, moves faster because of the tools, not dependent on them

Red Flags

• Big tech background only with no evidence of operating at startup speed or owning a full product end-to-end
• Job hopper, multiple short stints without clear progression or shipped product
• Has been unemployed for six or more months without a clear reason
• Wants a defined scope and structured environment, this role requires someone who creates structure, not someone who needs it
• No real AI agent or LLM experience, the product is deeply AI-driven and this is a hard requirement

$160,000 - $200,000 a year - Full-time

We’re an early-stage, accelerator-backed startup building the AI SEO platform that helps retail and e-commerce brands win at AI-driven shopping. As AI replaces traditional search, we give brands the tools to track how their products appear across AI engines, optimize product data and on-site content for AI recommendations, and enable instant checkout directly inside AI assistants. Strong early traction with live brand customers and a fast-growing pipeline.

Founded 2025 · 1-10 people · Industry: AI Tools