Jobs · Engineering · California

Founding AI Engineer

Kinro (YC P26) · San Francisco, CA · 3 mo ago
On-siteEngineering$120k–$300k/yrFull-time

About the role

You will help define how Kinro builds software in the age of agents. This is a hands-on role for someone who has built AI products end-to-end, trusts agentic coding as a force multiplier, and can ship across product, backend, evals, and infrastructure with strong systems judgment.

Responsibilities

  • Build AI product systems end-to-end, from tool use and backend services to evals and production monitoring.
  • Use agentic coding tools aggressively and responsibly: break down large problems, set guardrails, and review generated work with high standards.
  • Improve agent quality, latency, safety, and cost through better architectures, feedback loops, and evaluation harnesses.
  • Work across the stack wherever leverage is highest, including product surfaces, infra primitives, and customer deployments.
  • Turn one-off lessons from production into reusable product and platform capabilities.

Requirements

  • You have built AI products, agent workflows, or LLM systems end-to-end in production.
  • You know when to trust an agent, when to intervene, and how to structure work so the agent succeeds.
  • You understand tool calling, latency, reliability, security, and cost tradeoffs in agentic systems.
  • You can reason across the stack: application code, APIs, databases, cloud systems, and operational tooling.
  • You have strong product taste and care whether something feels simple, fast, and reliable for the end user.

Nice to have

  • Experience with evals, model routing, prompt injection defenses, sandboxing, or other AI systems safety work.
  • Experience in high-ownership product environments where engineers talk directly to users and ship quickly.
  • Experience in fintech, insurance, or other regulated environments.

Qualifications

  • 3+ years of relevant experience.
  • Strong understanding of machine learning and AI principles.
  • Experience with Python, JavaScript, and related technologies.
  • Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
  • Experience with data pipelines and ETL processes.
  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated testing.

Skills

  • Agentic coding skills.
  • Experience with AI safety and ethics.
  • Experience with regulatory compliance in the insurance industry.

Benefits

We aim to move quickly and keep the process practical.

Pay

$120K - $300K

Schedule

Full-time

Similar jobs

Founding AI Engineer

MeeBossSan Francisco Bay Area· Yesterday
Information Technology$180k–$240k/yrapply on meeboss.com

Founding AI Engineer

Hera (YC S25)San Francisco, CA· 4 mo ago
Engineering$100/hrapply on ycombinator.com

Founding AI Engineer

ReboltSan Francisco, CA· 11 mo ago
Engineering$60k–$180k/yrapply on ycombinator.com

Founding AI Engineer

MiddlewareSan Francisco, CA· 14 mo ago
Engineering$200k–$400k/yrapply on ycombinator.com

Founding AI Engineer

HyperspellSan Francisco, CA· 3 mo ago
Engineering$150–$220/hrapply on ycombinator.com