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Founding Engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL (NOW HIRING)

Clera

Founding Engineer ($3M pre-seed)

Chicago, IL · Remote

We're building the future of recruiting with AI - and we need an exceptional engineer to join our founding team in our San Francisco hackerhouse. We just raised a $3M pre-seed from top-tier investors ...

Clera

Founding Engineer ($3M pre-seed)

Chicago, IL · On-site

We're building the future of recruiting with AI - and we need an exceptional engineer to join our founding team in our San Francisco hackerhouse. We just raised a $3M pre-seed from top-tier investors ...

HirexHire

Founding Sr. Software Engineer

Chicago, IL · On-site

$126K - $166K/yr

This is a highly entrepreneurial, early-stage role for a senior IC who wants to operate in a founding engineer capacity, owning product initiatives end-to-end and helping shape both the technical ...

Qumis Inc

Founding Staff AI Engineer

Chicago, IL · On-site

$150K - $250K/yr

About the Role We're hiring a Founding Staff AI Engineer to build and ship production-grade AI that powers the core workflows of Qumis. You'll partner closely with the CTO and co-founders to design ...

Cyclotron, Inc.

AI-Native Product Engineer

Chicago, IL · On-site +1

$120K - $149K/yr

This person should operate less like a ticket-based contractor and more like a founding engineer assigned to a product area. The ideal candidate can understand user needs, define effective workflows ...

Cyclotron, Inc.

AI-Native Product Engineer

Chicago, IL · Remote

$120K - $149K/yr

This person should operate less like a ticket-based contractor and more like a founding engineer assigned to a product area. The ideal candidate can understand user needs, define effective workflows ...

Sauce

AI Transformation Engineer

Mundelein, IL

$80K - $107K/yr

Founder / Founding-engineer experience * HubSpot API * MongoDBPlaywright / Browser automation * Chrome extensions * Restaurant or logistics domain knowledge What We Offer: * Strong & Competitive ...

Coinflow

Frontend Engineer

Chicago, IL · On-site

$150K - $180K/yr

You'll work directly with the CTO and founding engineers, moving from rough product idea to shipped, polished UI without a handoff in between. What you'll do * Build and own our design system on top ...

Vooma

Account Executive

Chicago, IL · On-site

Mike built self driving trucks as a founding engineer at Kodiak Robotics (raised $250M) where he established and led their motion planning and safety teams. Jesse was previously CEO at a private ...

Vooma

Enterprise Account Executive

Chicago, IL · On-site

$150K - $180K/yr

Mike built self driving trucks as a founding engineer at Kodiak Robotics (raised $250M) where he established and led their motion planning and safety teams. Jesse was previously CEO at a private ...

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Founding Engineer information

See Chicago, IL salary details

$30.9K

$71.5K

$121.6K

How much do founding engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 27, 2026, the average yearly pay for founding engineer in Chicago, IL is $71,453.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $53,100.00 and $80,900.00 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 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.

What are the most commonly searched types of Founding Engineer jobs in Chicago, IL? The most popular types of Founding Engineer jobs in Chicago, IL are:
What are popular job titles related to Founding Engineer jobs in Chicago, IL? For Founding Engineer jobs in Chicago, IL, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Founding Engineer jobs in Chicago, IL look for? The top searched job categories for Founding Engineer jobs in Chicago, IL are:
Founding Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Founding Engineer job openings in Chicago, IL as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 94% Full Time, and 6% Part Time. Highlights an 90% In-person, and 10% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $71,453 per year, or $34.4 per hour.
Founding Engineer - Miravoice

Founding Engineer - Miravoice

Unusual Ventures

Mundelein, IL • On-site

Full-time

Posted 16 days ago

Job description

Company Description

At Miravoice, we’re building the platform to capture conversations at scale. At its core is an AI voice agent for pollsters and market researchers to conduct natural sounding surveys using AI. Our value proposition is simple: we get our customers more data, faster, for less. And our vision is to grow the GDP of the voice economy and make precision data collection truly effortless.

Team
Our team is deeply technical and built for this problem. We're former engineers, tech product managers, and ML researchers with deep expertise in voice AI, SaaS, and survey methodology, including published research. We've studied CS & AI at Stanford, Yale, & UCLA, and led large teams at Google, Apple, VMware, and McKinsey. Miravoice is backed by an all-star roster of top tech investors, including Unusual Ventures, Neo, 25madison Ventures, and angel investments from industry leaders at Google, Ramp, Atlassian, and PubMatic.

Role Description
As a Founding Engineer, you’ll help shape both our product and our company. You’ll work closely with the founders to design architecture, ship features, and define the product vision. You’ll have real ownership, and your decisions will have lasting impact on our technical and product direction. Beyond just programming, you’ll have the opportunity to co-author and publish novel research, interact with customers directly, and travel to conferences if you so desire.
Why it’s interesting:
  • Domain: You'll get exposure to the bleeding edge of voice AI. We’re building next-generation systems that can precisely handle complex hour-long conversations, with voices that sound genuinely human. You’ll work to improve AI conversation quality, scale our platform’s infrastructure to handle tens of millions of calls, and build out critical user flows for our customer-facing product console.

  • Strong customer pipeline: we’re already working with top polling and market-research firms and have made over 100,000 calls, with many more in the funnel.

  • Our founding team values builders above all, because we’re all builders at heart: We’re three deeply technical co-founders who have published papers in top journals, shipped software to millions of users, and led large teams at iconic technology companies like Apple, Google, and VMware. You'll get to grow alongside a rockstar team with product acumen and strong technical chops.

  • We’re making waves: we’ve been featured in a16z’s Future of Market Research, Greylock’s AI-Native User Research, and Google’s Gradient AI Fund theses on the space (under our old product name, Surveybot AI).

  • Research-focus: We’ve published and presented at top conferences like AAPOR, NLPOR@COLM, and MAPOR. Our founding engineers co-author publications and attend conferences alongside the founders and our customers.
What We’re Looking For
  • We're looking for strong generalist founding software engineers who are driven, independent, and want to push the boundaries of Voice AI at a breakneck pace. The skill we care about the most is the ability to learn quickly. Other characteristics that stand out:

  • Strong technical skills in backend, distributed systems, or AI/ML (bonus if you’ve worked with speech/voice systems)
  • Product-minded: you care deeply about user experience and design
  • Strong communication and collaboration skills
  • Experience building and shipping products in a startup or fast-paced environment
  • Excitement about joining an early-stage company and wearing many hats
  • Preferred but not required: Bachelors Degree or higher in Computer Science or Statistics
Other considerations:
  • Location: this role is in-person in the San Francisco Bay Area
  • Benefits: we offer competitive salaries, health insurance, dental & vision plans, a 401k match, and generous equity packages

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.