AI Engineer - Startups

About the role

Fonzi is an AI recruiting company that replaces job boards and recruiter spam. Companies request to interview you and submit salary bids upfront. Each week, hiring managers at 100+ pre‑vetted startups in New York City and San Francisco review a curated group of engineers. They read profiles optimized by Fonzi’s team to surface what you’ve built, how you think about systems, and whether you’re the kind of engineer who ships. The participating companies span Applied AI startups, frontier labs, hypergrowth startups, private‑equity firms building lean AI teams, and more, backed by investors such as A16z, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Y Combinator, and others.

The process begins with a 5‑minute application. Fonzi reaches out, learns what you’re building and what excites you, and optimizes your profile. Hiring managers review the cohort and request interviews with candidates they’re interested in. Companies then submit competing salary bids directly to you. You only interview where you’re genuinely interested. The service is completely free, and you can contact an iMessage agent plus human support anytime for questions, scheduling, or coordination.

Requirements

• Have built AI‑powered products end‑to‑end, not just prototypes, but systems handling real users.
• Can talk fluently about retrieval, memory, agent frameworks, context engineering, eval pipelines and other cutting‑edge topics.
• Combine strong software engineering fundamentals with deep awareness of the latest developments in LLMs and agentic systems.
• Thrive in startup environments where problems are ambiguous and teams are small.
• Have 2‑8 years of experience, ideally with at least one stint at a high‑growth company.

Pay

$150,000 – $400,000+ base salary, depending on experience and role. Many positions include meaningful equity at pre‑seed through Series B stage companies.