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Founding Engineer Jobs in New York (NOW HIRING)

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 ...

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 ...

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 · On-site

$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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Launchpad Recruitment

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · Hybrid

$120K - $180K/yr

Founding Engineer Package: $120k - $180k + equity Location: New York City (3 days per week in office) Launchpad Recruitment are partnering with a high-growth, VC-backed (GV & YC) AI-native investment ...

Ceno Group Inc.

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$125K - $175K/yr

This is a founding engineering role focused on backend and infrastructure, and it carries three of the company's hardest deliverables. * Stand up the production systems. Build the scalable systems ...

Doji

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

The Role We're looking for a founding engineer who can move fast across the stack and go deep when the problem demands it. Early on, the work will be varied: one week you might ship a scrappy 0-to-1 ...

Upside

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $200K/yr

We're now looking for our founding engineer to help us build the product that can support and continue to drive our early growth. Ideal candidates have a founder mentality and strong ownership. You ...

MLabs

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $350K/yr

Founding Engineer Location: New York, NY On-site | Full-time Compensation: $150K - $350K Our client is a high-growth, venture-backed startup on a mission to reinvent technical interviewing and ...

Hera

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$200K - $250K/yr

Join our Founding Team to impact real lives We are looking for ambitious and relentless engineers to join us on this mission. Whereas at other companies you may be working on the next widget ...

Fleetline

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$150K - $200K/yr

Has experience at top start ups or big tech companies companies; or is an ex-founder/founding engineer; or someone who obsesses over side projects (deployed and live, ideally). * Comfortable with ...

Ropes AI, Inc

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

TL;DR: We're looking for founding engineers to help us build human-focused security tech, reinvent skill-based interviewing, and transform how the the $4T+ contingent workforce industry operates ...

Autonomy Health

Founding Engineer

Manhattan, NY · On-site

As a Founding Engineer, you will design and build scalable workflows, maintain data infrastructure, and work closely with customers to enhance the platform while laying the groundwork for future ...

Upside

Founding Engineer

New York, NY

$150K - $200K/yr

We're now looking for our founding engineer to help us build the product that can support and continue to drive our early growth. Ideal candidates have a founder mentality and strong ownership. You ...

Lava

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

Founding Engineer (NYC) Lava: the connector to every LLM, API, and MCP. Join Lava's team in shaping how people and AI build, monetize, and work together. About Lava Lava is a universal connector to ...

Precharm

Founding Engineer

Manhattan, NY · On-site

They are seeking a founding engineer to build critical systems for their trading business, including exchange connectors and execution systems, while contributing to the firm's profitability.

Volca

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

Founding Engineer @ Volca Wanted: Top Tier Engineer Looking to Work on Applied AI in a Small, High Autonomy Team What we do: The Industry: Home services is a funny space. On average, when we hop on a ...

David Joseph & Company

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

$175K - $250K/yr

FinTech / AI The Role A Founding Engineer working primarily on the new AI CFO agent, with tech-lead-level autonomy from day one. The current dev team is small (both current developers are ex-HFT)

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Founding Engineer information

See New York salary details

$32.8K

$75.9K

$129.1K

How much do founding engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Aug 7, 2026, the average yearly pay for founding engineer in New York is $75,884.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $56,300.00 and $85,900.00 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?

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.

What are the most commonly searched types of Founding Engineer jobs in New York? The most popular types of Founding Engineer jobs in New York are:
What are popular job titles related to Founding Engineer jobs in New York? For Founding Engineer jobs in New York, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Founding Engineer jobs in New York look for? The top searched job categories for Founding Engineer jobs in New York are:
What cities in New York are hiring for Founding Engineer jobs? Cities in New York with the most Founding Engineer job openings:
Founding Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Founding Engineer job openings in New York as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 33% Internship, 33% Full Time, and 34% Contract. Highlights an 100% In-person job distribution, with an average salary of $75,884 per year, or $36.5 per hour.

Founding Engineer

Lawrence Harvey

New York, NY • On-site

$180K - $225K/yr

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision

Re-posted 23 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