Founding Software Engineer ($150k-$250k + Equity) at high-growth applied AI startup

High-growth applied AI startup.

About the role

As a Founding Software Engineer, you will design and build the core technical architecture for a new AI-native platform. You'll lead development across backend services, agentic workflows, and hardware integration, moving from ambiguous prototypes to reliable production systems. This is a ground-floor opportunity to shape both a physical-world product and a high-performance engineering culture.

Why this role is remarkable

• Work at the frontier of applied AI, building products that interact with the physical world through connected devices and intelligent reasoning.
• Gain massive ownership as a founding team member, influencing every major technical decision and the long-term product roadmap from day one.
• Benefit from a well-capitalized environment led by serial founders with deep expertise in robotics, AI, and complex systems development.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement core backend services, APIs, and data pipelines to support a complex, real-world AI platform.
• Integrate advanced AI models and agentic workflows that reason over context and maintain state across different environments.
• Collaborate with founders to translate customer needs into technical solutions while establishing best practices for observability and deployment.

Requirements

• Possesses exceptional software engineering fundamentals and a track record of shipping complex, high-reliability production systems at scale.
• Demonstrates deep experience with modern programming languages like Python or TypeScript and familiarity with LLM infrastructure or retrieval systems.
• Thrives in fast-paced, ambiguous startup environments where they can take full ownership of loosely defined problems and technical challenges.

Pay

$150k–$250k + Equity

Location: Palo Alto, USA