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Founding Engineer Jobs (NOW HIRING)

LHi Group Ltd

Founding Engineer

Manhattan, NY · On-site

$190K - $220K/yr

Founding Software Engineer | AI Developer Infrastructure | Rust / TypeScript | NYC Location: New York City (5 days onsite) I'm working with an exceptionally well-funded early-stage startup that ...

Lawrence Harvey

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$180K - $225K/yr

Founding Software Engineer | AI Developer Infrastructure | Rust / TypeScript | NYC Location: New York City (5 days onsite) I'm working with an exceptionally well-funded early-stage startup that ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$140K - $180K/yr

About the Role Join a small, high-velocity founding team as engineer #4, working directly with the CTO and fellow founding engineers at an AI-powered talent acquisition startup in San Francisco. This ...

Hirevouch

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site +1

Founding Engineer Job title: Founding Engineer Location: San Francisco, CA (in-person only, relocation available) About the Company They help speech, occupational, and physical therapists build their ...

SLR Search

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$200K - $300K/yr

Founding Full Stack Engineer Benefits - Starting Salary targeting $200K - $300K - Competitive equity package - Comprehensive medical dental vision - Monthly food stipend - Unlimited snacks and ...

David Joseph & Company

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · Hybrid

$200K - $270K/yr

Developer infrastructure The Role The client is hiring a Founding Engineer to build at every level of the cloud infrastructure stack -- production software, customer-facing problem solving, and ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

About the Role We are looking for a Founding Engineer to join our early-stage team. This is a ground-floor opportunity to help shape the technical foundation of a growing company, working closely ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$160K - $270K/yr

About the Role A seed-stage AI infrastructure company is hiring 2-3 Founding Engineers to work on the core of a graph-native context and memory platform purpose-built for AI agents. This is not a ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

About the Role We are looking for a Founding Engineer to join our early-stage team. This is a ground-floor opportunity to help shape the technical foundation of a growing company, working closely ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$160K - $270K/yr

About the Role A seed-stage AI infrastructure company is hiring 2-3 Founding Engineers to work on the core of a graph-native context and memory platform purpose-built for AI agents. This is not a ...

Thera

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$100K - $250K/yr

Founding Engineer, Thera (NYC) Thera is building the financial OS for modern SMBs. Payroll, payments, treasury, spend, and accounting in one ecosystem that actually works end-to-end. We're looking ...

EQL Tech

Founding Engineer

Palo Alto, CA · On-site

The Opportunity EQL Tech is partnering with PhormAI to hire an exceptional Founding Engineer to join its team as the company builds Darwin, its Physical AI platform for Health & Wellness, into the ...

Thera

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$100K - $250K/yr

🚀 Founding Engineer, Thera (NYC) Thera is building the financial OS for modern SMBs. Payroll, payments, treasury, spend, and accounting in one ecosystem that actually works end-to-end. We're ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$175K - $225K/yr

About the Role This is a rare, high-impact founding engineer position at an early-stage consumer AI startup building a real-time, AI-enabled platform to digitize human connection. You'll work ...

Fabrion

Founding Engineer

Bodega Bay, CA · On-site

Founding Engineer (Full Stack) Location: San Francisco Bay Area Type: Full-Time Compensation: Competitive salary + meaningful equity (founding tier) Backed by 8VC, we're building a world-class team ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$200K - $300K/yr

About the Role A fast-moving, early-stage startup in San Francisco is looking for a Founding Engineer to join as one of the first technical hires. This is a rare opportunity to work directly with the ...

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How much do founding engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 26, 2026, the average yearly pay for founding engineer in the United States is $69,362.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $51,500.00 and $78,500.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are the biggest challenges a Founding Engineer typically faces at an early-stage startup?

As a Founding Engineer, you’ll often be tasked with building a product from the ground up while balancing rapid development with long-term technical vision. Resource constraints and evolving product requirements can require creative problem-solving and the ability to prioritize effectively. You’ll work closely with the founding team, making pivotal decisions that shape both technology and culture, so adaptability and a hands-on approach are important. While the environment can be demanding and ambiguous, it also offers unique opportunities to learn, take ownership, and have a major impact on the success of the company.

What is a Founding Engineer job?

A Founding Engineer is one of the first technical hires at a startup, responsible for building the company's core products and setting the foundation for its technology stack. They work closely with the founders, making key architectural decisions, writing production-ready code, and often wearing multiple hats across engineering, product, and strategy. This role requires a mix of deep technical expertise, problem-solving skills, and adaptability to thrive in a fast-paced, early-stage environment.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive in the Founding Engineer position, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Founding Engineer, you need deep expertise in software development, system architecture, and product design, typically backed by experience with startups or building products from scratch. Familiarity with modern programming languages, cloud platforms, and agile tools such as Git, AWS, and Jira is often essential. Exceptional problem-solving, strong ownership mentality, and the ability to communicate clearly in fast-paced, unstructured environments set standout candidates apart. These skills are crucial because Founding Engineers must quickly turn vision into reality, adapt to changing needs, and help establish the technical foundation of a new company.

More about Founding Engineer jobs
What cities are hiring for Founding Engineer jobs? Cities with the most Founding Engineer job openings:
What are the most commonly searched types of Founding Engineer jobs? The most popular types of Founding Engineer jobs are:
What states have the most Founding Engineer jobs? States with the most job openings for Founding Engineer jobs include:
What job categories do people searching Founding Engineer jobs look for? The top searched job categories for Founding Engineer jobs are:
Founding Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Founding Engineer job openings in the United States as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 96% Full Time, 1% Part Time, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 87% Physical, 5% Hybrid, and 8% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $69,362 per year, or $33.3 per hour.

Founding Engineer

LHi Group Ltd

Manhattan, NY • On-site

$190K - $220K/yr

Other

Medical, Dental, Vision

Posted 10 days ago

Job description

Founding Software Engineer | AI Developer Infrastructure | Rust / TypeScript | NYC
Location: New York City (5 days onsite)
I'm working with an exceptionally well-funded early-stage startup that's building infrastructure for the next generation of AI-powered software development.
Their platform gives engineering leaders visibility into how AI coding agents perform across the software development lifecycle-tracking AI-generated code from prompt through production to help teams measure quality, reliability, and developer productivity.
Already seeing strong enterprise adoption, they're now looking to hire three Founding Engineers to help define both the product and the company.
The Opportunity
This is a genuine founding engineering role where you'll own major technical decisions from day one.
You'll work across architecture, product development, infrastructure, and customer deployments while collaborating directly with the founding team and early enterprise customers.
The engineering challenges are deeply technical, spanning developer tooling, distributed systems, observability, Git internals, and large-scale data processing.
What You'll Be Building
  • Core systems that track AI-generated code throughout the software development lifecycle
  • High-performance pipelines for ingesting, processing, and querying developer and AI agent activity
  • Integrations with leading AI coding assistants and developer platforms
  • Observability systems that measure agent performance, code quality, and engineering productivity
  • Infrastructure supporting secure, high-performance enterprise deployments
  • Developer tooling that operates transparently with virtually no workflow disruption
  • Open standards for AI code attribution and developer telemetry

You'll also work closely with design partners and enterprise customers, helping shape both the technical roadmap and the future direction of the platform.
What We're Looking For
You'll likely bring:
  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • Experience working in high-growth startups (Seed through Series C)
  • Strong backend, infrastructure, distributed systems, or full-stack engineering experience
  • Experience building production systems where performance, scalability, and reliability matter
  • A high level of ownership and the ability to thrive with ambiguity
  • Strong product instincts and an interest in building tools that developers genuinely enjoy using

The engineering team primarily works with Rust and TypeScript, although experience in those languages isn't a prerequisite.
Bonus experience includes:
  • Developer tools or developer infrastructure
  • Git internals
  • Observability or telemetry platforms
  • Distributed systems and high-scale backend infrastructure

Why This Role?
  • Founding engineer opportunity with meaningful equity
  • Solve genuinely difficult engineering problems at the forefront of AI software development
  • Build products used by engineering teams at leading enterprises
  • Work directly alongside experienced, repeat founders
  • Shape engineering culture, product direction, and technical architecture from the earliest stages
  • Join a small, highly technical team where every engineer has significant ownership

Compensation
  • Base Salary: $190,000-$220,000
  • Meaningful founding equity package
  • Medical, dental, and vision coverage
  • In-person collaboration in New York City
  • High-autonomy, fast-moving engineering culture

If you're excited by developer infrastructure, distributed systems, AI tooling, or building category-defining products from the ground up, I'd be happy to share more details confidentially.

Apply