Founding Engineer

The Role

This is a Founding Engineer with a large equity component. We prefer folks who have already either founded or been a founding engineer of a startup.

The CEO is a former founder with an exit, with deep experience across payments, e-commerce, fashion and re-commerce. She is non-technical, which means this hire owns everything technical: architecture, AI/ML, the product, and eventually the engineering team. There is a junior 2-person existing engineering team, but no technical leadership. Just a product with proven traction, a strong roadmap, and a massive technical problem worth solving.

The business side — unlocking the unique dataset, product-market fit, the business model, and a highly compelling distribution flywheel, which is already proven. The engineering challenge is just beginning.

What You’ll Build

• The Ownership Graph: Connecting consumers, products, brands, and transactions at scale. Graph database architecture
• ML/NLP Pipeline: E-receipt parsing mapping 1,400+ merchant formats to auto-populate ownership data. Gmail sync at scale.
• Agentic Commerce Engine: AI pricing across 10,000+ brands. Automated resale offers at peak price alignment. Zero-friction, one-click resale
• Consumer Intelligence: Cross-network personalization pipeline. Complete-the-look recommendations. Push intelligence into merchant personalization offerings.
• Merchant Integration Layer: Scalable API infrastructure for 100+ (and growing) Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce partners

What We’re Looking For

• Production AI/ML experience: Shipped real AI-powered features to real users. LLMs (Claude, GPT, open-source models) in a production context, not just prototypes
• Full-stack delivery: Backend, APIs, data pipelines, and frontend when needed. No separate teams to hand off to
• Modern AI tooling fluency: Cursor, Copilot, Claude Code, Codex are daily tools, not things you’ve heard of
• Consumer product instinct: Built things real consumers use. Understands engagement loops, retention, and what makes a product feel magical
• Early-stage DNA: Joined a company at
• Ownership mindset: wants to build and lead what this becomes, not just contribute to one.
• Nice to have: Personalization engines, two-sided marketplace experience, e-commerce infrastructure, graph databases, mobile (React Native)

The First 90 Days

• First 30 days: Ship something. Close gaps in the existing system, stand up a working AI/ML prototype, and put together an architecture plan
• First 60 days: AI-powered feature in the hands of real users. 3-month technical roadmap planned. First 1–2 engineers entering the hiring pipeline. Contributing to partner conversations with real demos
• First 90 days: Multiple AI/ML features shipping. Consumer Ownership Graph meaningfully improved: better data, better matching, better experience. Beginning to build the team

Compensation

• Significant founding-level ownership: this is one of the most generous equity packages you'll see at this stage, priced at current pre-seed valuation before the next fundraise. Base cash salary: $100K-$250K USD, negotiable depending on experience and equity split. Founder-level cash, below market by design — the delta is the equity.
• Location: Remote (US or Canada). Strong preference for Brooklyn / NYC - the CEO and Founder is Brooklyn-based but finding the right person is our top priority.