Founding Engineer

Job Description

New York, NY On-site (5 days/week) Full-time

Compensation: $180K - $250K + founding equityAbout the Company

Our client is a stealth-stage AI startup building multi-modal agents (voice, SMS, and email) that automate operations end-to-end for a large, under-digitized consumer-services industry. Founded by engineers who previously helped scale high-growth consumer platforms, the team has already found strong early product-market fit and is growing fast. This is an early founding-team seat with the chance to own a full product domain from day one.

Founded 2024 Small Team Industry: AI, Marketplace, Consumer, B2B, EducationThe Role

As a founding engineer, you'll take full ownership of a core domain, make product calls without a PM, and ship to production daily alongside a small, high-velocity team working in person in New York.

What you'll be doing

Own a core product domain end-to-end (for example the B2B business platform, the voice/SMS/email agent layer, the underlying data/AI graph, or a new consumer product)

Talk directly to customers, turn their feedback into product decisions, and ship the work yourself

Build and tune multi-modal agents for low-latency voice, strong messaging response rates, and durable conversation state across channels

Set the architecture and quality bar for non-deterministic systems: evals, prompt versioning, guardrails, and drift detection

Work across the full stack, from React/Next.js on the front end to Node.js services and Python voice pipelines

Tech stack: TypeScript, Node.js, Next.js, React, Python, LiveKit, Deepgram, Redis, plus modern LLM and agent tooling (Anthropic/OpenAI SDKs, Vercel AI SDK, Mastra, Braintrust)Requirements

3-8 years of full-stack engineering experience

Track record shipping a product from zero to one, whether at a high-growth startup, as a founder, or on a new-product team inside a larger company

Strong command of TypeScript across the stack (Node.js and React/Next.js)

Comfortable owning product decisions without a PM, including speaking directly with customers

Real, hands-on depth in at least one relevant area: production voice or SMS agents, long-running agent state and memory, B2B2C or marketplace products, or agent evaluation and guardrails

Genuine product experience building with LLM APIs or agent SDKs (not tutorials or thin wrappers)Nice to Haves

Prior experience as a founder or at an accelerator-backed startup that gained real traction, with the perspective to reflect on what worked and what didn't

Degree from a strong computer science program (weighed more heavily for candidates at the earlier-career end of the range)

Python experience with real-time voice pipelines (LiveKit, Deepgram, STT/TTS) or with evaluation toolingWhy Join

Join at the founding stage and own an entire domain from day one

Work directly with an experienced founding team in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment

Strong early traction in a large market with room to grow into leadership or stay on a deep IC track

Competitive salary plus meaningful founding equityDetails

Location: New York, NY

Work policy: On-site, 5 days/week

Compensation: $180K - $250K + equity

Visa sponsorship: Open to visa transfers (e.g. OPT, H-1B transfers)

Employment type: Full-time

Permanent