Engineering Startup Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Are you passionate about startups. Do you get excited about helping founders solve hard technical problems at the earliest and most critical stages of building their company. We're looking for a Solutions Architect who wants to be deeply embedded in San Francisco's startup ecosystem.

Come join us!
Early-stage startups are unlike any other customer. Founders are moving fast, resources are tight, and the technical decisions they make today can either unlock their growth or become a bottleneck six months from now. Many of these companies are coming straight out of top accelerators like Y Combinator or are freshly backed by leading VC firms, and they need a trusted technical advisor in their corner.

This is where you come in.
In this role, you'll work directly with early-stage founders across a wide range of industries including AI/ML, FinTech, ClimateTech, healthcare, consumer, B2B SaaS, and more. You'll help them make smart, pragmatic architectural decisions that set them up to move fast without breaking things later. You'll have the chance to build real, lasting relationships with these founders and establish yourself as one of the first trusted technical voices in their journey.
You won't be handing founders a generic playbook

On any given week you might be helping a first-time founder think through their architecture before they've written a single line of code, helping a seed-stage company figure out how to scale after an unexpected viral launch, or working through a compliance challenge with a FinTech startup that needs to move quickly but can't afford to cut corners.
Beyond your direct work with founders, you'll also get time to stay sharp and keep your technical skills fresh. You'll act as a voice for the startups you work with, making sure the right products and features are being built for their needs. And you'll have plenty of opportunities to share your knowledge more broadly by writing technical content and presenting at startup and developer events across San Francisco's ecosystem.
Key job responsibilities
- Work hands-on with early-stage founders to design and iterate on architectures that are practical for where they are today but built to scale as they grow
- Help startups navigate the fast-moving GenAI landscape, from selecting the right foundation models and AI services to building production-ready AI-powered products and services
- Guide founders through the real challenges of building GenAI applications, including managing model costs, latency, accuracy, safety, and AI best practices
- Support startups in building the right data foundations to power their AI products, whether that's vector databases, data pipelines, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), or fine-tuning workflows
- Build and deepen relationships within San Francisco's startup ecosystem, including top accelerators like Y Combinator, incubators, and leading VC firms
- Be a voice for your founders, connecting their feedback and needs directly to product and engineering teams to help shape the tools and services being built for them
- Create technical content tailored to early-stage startups, such as blog posts, reference architectures, and sample code, that helps founders move faster and spend less time reinventing the wheel
- Share your expertise at startup events, demo days, and developer meetups across the San Francisco ecosystem to build trust and visibility in the community
About the team
Diverse Experiences
Amazon values diverse experiences

If your career hasn't followed a traditional path, or includes alternative and relevant experiences that differ from what is listed in the in the job description, we encourage you to apply.
Why AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating - that's why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.
Work/Life Balance
We value work-life harmony

Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there's nothing we can't achieve in the cloud.
Inclusive Team Culture
Here at AWS, we value inclusivity.

Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empowers us to be proud of our differences and celebrate them. Ongoing events and learning experiences continue to inspire us to embrace our uniqueness.
Mentorship and Career Growth
We're continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth's Best Employer. That's why you'll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.