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Founding Data Engineer Jobs in New York (NOW HIRING)

Percepta

Founding Data Engineer

Manhattan, NY · On-site

$126K - $151K/yr

About The Role We're hiring one of the founding members of Percepta's data team - a role that lives across the full spectrum from data engineering to data science to ML engineering. You won't be ...

Percepta

Founding Data Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $400K/yr

About The Role We're hiring one of the founding members of Percepta's data team - a role that lives across the full spectrum from data engineering to data science to ML engineering. You won't be ...

Counsel

Founding Data Analyst

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $175K/yr

This is an early-stage, high-impact founding role spanning data wrangling and pipeline development ... Partner with Analytics Engineer to validate pipelines and metric definitions. * Turn messy datasets ...

Shaped

Data Engineer

Brooklyn, NY · Remote

$130K - $200K/yr

You will be a founding engineer working to reliably ingest customer data (both with batch and real-time processing) into our our state-of-the-art AI discovery engine. As one of Shaped's early ...

Shaped

Data Engineer

Brooklyn, NY · On-site

$130K - $200K/yr

You will be a founding engineer working to reliably ingest customer data (both with batch and real-time processing) into our our state-of-the-art AI discovery engine. As one of Shaped's early ...

Cognition

Data Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$125K - $150K/yr

Among our founding team, we have world-class competitive programmers, former founders, and leaders ... About the Role We're hiring a technical Data Engineer to own our full data stack - from database ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · Remote

$150K - $220K/yr

... a Founding Engineer to own the entire technical execution of the platform. You will partner ... Build evaluation and training loops that improve the system from simulation runs, test data ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $220K/yr

... a Founding Engineer to own the entire technical execution of the platform. You will partner ... Build evaluation and training loops that improve the system from simulation runs, test data ...

NxT Level

Founding Backend Engineer

Manhattan, NY · On-site

Founding Senior Backend Engineer (Data Platform / Integrations) Location: New York City - In-Person The Opportunity Our client is hiring a Founding Senior Backend Engineer to own the data platform ...

NxT Level

Founding Backend Engineer

Manhattan, NY · On-site

Founding Senior Backend Engineer (Data Platform / Integrations) Location: New York City - In-Person The Opportunity Our client is hiring a Founding Senior Backend Engineer to own the data platform ...

NxT Level

Founding Backend Engineer

Manhattan, NY

Founding Senior Backend Engineer (Data Platform / Integrations) Location: New York City -- In-Person The Opportunity Our client is hiring a Founding Senior Backend Engineer to own the data platform ...

NxT Level

Founding Backend Engineer

Manhattan, NY

Founding Senior Backend Engineer (Data Platform / Integrations) Location: New York City -- In-Person The Opportunity Our client is hiring a Founding Senior Backend Engineer to own the data platform ...

David Joseph & Company

Founding Engineer

New York, NY

$160K - $260K/yr

Data / AI The Role A high-ownership founding-engineer role working directly with the founders on product vision and implementation, as one of the first engineering hires at a company with real, daily ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · Remote

$137K - $190K/yr

About the Role This is a rare founding engineer opportunity at an early-stage, venture-backed AI ... Solid data modeling fundamentals and the ability to design scalable, production-grade systems.

Jampack AI

Founding Engineer - Fullstack

New York, NY · On-site

The Role We're hiring a founding engineer to build the core platform that powers our AI agents and ... Design secure, auditable data models and event-driven pipelines that power our agent workflows

Clera

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$137K - $190K/yr

About the Role This is a rare founding engineer opportunity at an early-stage, venture-backed AI ... Solid data modeling fundamentals and the ability to design scalable, production-grade systems.

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Founding Data Engineer information

What is a founding data engineer?

Founding Data Engineers are among the first technical hires at a startup, responsible for designing, building, and scaling the company's data infrastructure from the ground up. They work closely with founders and early team members to define data architecture, set up data pipelines, and ensure data quality and accessibility for product development and business insights. This role often requires a blend of software engineering, data modeling, and strategic decision-making skills, as well as the flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing priorities in a startup environment.

What are the unique challenges and opportunities of being a founding data engineer at an early-stage startup?

As a Founding Data Engineer, you'll face the challenge of building data infrastructure from scratch, often with limited resources and evolving requirements. You’ll work closely with founders and cross-functional teams to define data strategies, implement pipelines, and ensure data quality. This role offers significant influence over technical decisions and architecture, and you'll likely wear multiple hats, contributing to both backend engineering and data analytics. The fast-paced environment fosters rapid skill development and provides substantial opportunities for career growth as the company scales.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a founding data engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Founding Data Engineer, you need strong expertise in data architecture, database design, and software engineering, often backed by a degree in computer science or a related field. Familiarity with cloud platforms (like AWS or GCP), ETL frameworks, programming languages (such as Python or Scala), and data warehousing tools is typically required. Exceptional problem-solving, adaptability, and collaboration skills set standout candidates apart in this role. These abilities are crucial for building scalable data systems and shaping the technical foundation of an early-stage company.

What is the difference between Founding Data Engineer vs Data Engineer?

AspectFounding Data EngineerData Engineer
Required CredentialsBachelor's or higher in CS, experience in startup environmentsBachelor's or higher in CS, relevant data tools experience
Work EnvironmentEarly-stage startups, high flexibility, broad responsibilitiesEstablished companies, specialized roles, structured teams
Employer & Industry UsageFounding teams, startups, tech companiesTech firms, finance, healthcare, large organizations
Search & Comparison IntentUnderstanding startup data roles, early-stage responsibilitiesStandard data engineering roles, career progression

The main difference between a Founding Data Engineer and a Data Engineer lies in their work environment and responsibilities. Founding Data Engineers typically work in startups, handling broad tasks and building data infrastructure from scratch, while Data Engineers in established companies focus on specific data pipelines within structured teams. Both roles require similar technical skills and educational backgrounds, but their scope and context differ significantly.

What are popular job titles related to Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York?

For Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What job categories do people searching Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York look for?

The top searched job categories for Founding Data Engineer jobs in New York are:

What cities in New York are hiring for Founding Data Engineer jobs?

Cities in New York with the most Founding Data Engineer job openings:

Founding Data Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Founding Data Engineer job openings in New York as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 83% Full Time, 13% Part Time, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 86% Physical, 4% Hybrid, and 10% Remote job distribution.

Founding Data Engineer

Percepta

Manhattan, NY • On-site

$126K - $151K/yr

Other

Posted 13 days ago

Percepta rating

5.9

Company rating: 5.9 out of 10

Based on 25 frontline employees who took The Breakroom Quiz

38th of 71 rated call and contact centers

Job description

Who We Are
Percepta's mission is to transform critical institutions with applied AI. We care that industries that power the world (e.g. healthcare, manufacturing, energy) benefit from frontier technology.
To make that happen, we embed with industry-leading customers to drive AI transformation. We bring together:
  • Forward-deployed expertise in engineering, product, and research
  • Mosaic, our in-house toolkit for rapidly deploying agentic workflows
  • Strategic partnerships with Anthropic, McKinsey, AWS, companies within the General Catalyst portfolio, and more

Our team is a quickly growing group of Applied AI Engineers, Embedded Product Managers and Researchers motivated by diffusing the promise of AI into improvements we can feel in our day to day lives.
Percepta is a direct partnership with General Catalyst, a global transformation and investment company.
About The Role
We're hiring one of the founding members of Percepta's data team - a role that lives across the full spectrum from data engineering to data science to ML engineering. You won't be boxed into one of those; the best person here has a center of gravity in one and real range across the others.
The job has two halves, and you'll do both:
  1. Be the data person. Build the pipelines, models, analysis, "data packs," and ontology that turn messy enterprise data into something AI can actually use - and do it fast, inside real customer environments.
  2. Build the product around that. Build the tooling, abstractions, and increasingly agentic/automated systems that make the first half faster and compounding across every customer we work with. This is where you set the taste and help form our strategy for how Percepta does data - not as a one-off, but as something that gets better every time we do it.

As a founding hire, you're not inheriting a playbook - you're writing it.
What You'll Do
  • Build end-to-end pipelines and models that turn fragmented, messy enterprise data into high-leverage, AI-ready assets
  • Structure and normalize noisy datasets - defining the data packs and ontology that our AI engineers build on top of
  • Build the internal product and tooling that makes data work faster and repeatable across customers, so each engagement compounds rather than starts from zero
  • Work directly with operators and product/AI engineers to turn high-value use cases into production data workflows
  • Form strong technical opinions on data models, storage, orchestration, and infra tradeoffs - and make the calls
What We're Looking For
You might come from any point on the spectrum - a strong data engineer; a software engineer who's done real data work; someone who's done data science and software; or an ML engineer who now wants to build more. What's common: you can build in ambiguity, you form opinions and ship, and you care about building leverage, not just outputs.
  • Strong experience around some combination of Data Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning.
  • A product instinct for the second half of the job - you want to build the thing that makes the work easier, not just do the work
  • Intuition for what modern AI/ML and LLM systems actually need from data (features, retrieval, context, embeddings)
  • High ownership and strong communication - you're comfortable embedded directly with customer teams
Nice To Have
  • Experience building agentic or automated data-engineering tooling
  • Hands-on experience with modern cloud data platforms (e.g., Databricks)
  • Experience with health-system data (EHR, claims, and other operational healthcare datasets) or other complex, regulated enterprise data
  • Prior startup, founding, or forward-deployed experience

We're working against an incredibly ambitious mission. It won't be easy, but it will likely be the most fulfilling work of your career. If this excites you, let's chat, even if you don't meet all of the qualifications above.
Our Values
Dream bigger: We have the unique privilege of taking on the most ambitious problems and we should chase them with optimism, responsibility, and genuine belief that we can make it happen. We have to embrace the hard things when no one else will.
Heart in the game: What we're doing matters and we have to give a shit. Internally, that means fixing badness when you find it. Externally, it means honoring the trust our customers place in us with their most important problems. This isn't a 9-5, nor is it a job we're ever going to monitor your hours. We promise to put work in front of you that matters and in return, we ask you to promise to care.
Win for the customer: Everyone is an engineer and the job of an engineer is to deliver outcomes, not outputs. Everything we do-the products we build, the partnerships we launch, the strategy we set-exists to make our customers successful. Delivery is the strategy.
Make the call: Organizations are only as strong as the pace at which they make decisions. Everyone at Percepta should feel empowered to commit and shape the ambiguity in front of them. But "make the call" cuts both ways: make the decision and make the phone call. High-agency decision-making only works with high-bandwidth communication and we commit to never operate in silos.
Intensity with kindness: We believe in excellence in execution, candor in feedback, ruthlessness in prioritization, and survivalist urgency. We also believe you don't need to be an asshole to deliver on any of this. The trust built through shared kindness and vulnerability is what makes the intensity sustainable.

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