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Founding Engineer Jobs in Raleigh, NC (NOW HIRING)

Senior+ Software Engineer

Durham, NC

$111K - $146.30K/yr

The founding team were all early employees at cybersecurity unicorn, JupiterOne, and led key engineering and sales teams that led to its rapid growth and 8 figure ARR in 2 years. The Role As an ...

Senior+ Software Engineer (AI Agents)

Durham, NC

$111K - $146.30K/yr

The founding team were all early employees at cybersecurity unicorn, JupiterOne, and led key engineering and sales teams that led to its rapid growth and 8 figure ARR in 2 years. The Role As a ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION Highway Design Engineer | Raleigh, NC Join our dynamic team as a ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

ABOUT THE POSITION Highway Design Engineer | Raleigh, NC Join our dynamic team as a Highway Design ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION VHB, a leading firm in Planning, Engineering, and Environmental ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

ABOUT THE POSITION VHB, a leading firm in Planning, Engineering, and Environmental Sciences with ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION Highway Design Engineer | Raleigh, NC Join our dynamic team as a ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION Highway Design Engineer | Raleigh, NC Join our dynamic team as a ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION VHB, a leading firm in Planning, Engineering, and Environmental ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION VHB, a leading firm in Planning, Engineering, and Environmental ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION Structural Bridge Engineer | Charlotte, NC | Raleigh, NC | Hybrid VHB ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Overview ABOUT THE POSITION Structural Bridge Engineer | Charlotte, NC | Raleigh, NC | Hybrid VHB ... Since our founding, we have intentionally fostered a culture of inclusion and belonging, supported ...

Deployed Engineer (Raleigh)

Raleigh, NC · On-site

$150K - $250K/yr

... founding/product engineering), ideally in a startup or scale-up * Strong Python, JavaScript and systems fundamentals * Have designed agent-based or LLM-powered applications beyond simple API calls ...

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Founding Engineer information

See Raleigh, NC salary details

$29.2K

$67.4K

$114.7K

How much do founding engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jun 3, 2026, the average yearly pay for founding engineer in Raleigh, NC is $67,425.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $50,100.00 and $76,300.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

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 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 are the most commonly searched types of Founding Engineer jobs in Raleigh, NC? The most popular types of Founding Engineer jobs in Raleigh, NC are:
What job categories do people searching Founding Engineer jobs in Raleigh, NC look for? The top searched job categories for Founding Engineer jobs in Raleigh, NC are:

Senior+ Software Engineer

OPINE

Durham, NC

$111K - $146.30K/yr

Other

Posted 27 days ago


Job description

Senior+ Software Engineer

Opine is a fast-growing AI sales tech startup trusted by leading companies like Docker, Socket Security, BigID, and MaintainX. Opine transforms scattered conversations, notes, and documents into dynamic, living account plans. The platform proactively surfaces risks, aligns every stakeholder, and automates repetitive work from discovery to delivery. The result is faster sales cycles, cleaner handoffs, and consistent execution across sales, presales, and customer success. The founding team were all early employees at cybersecurity unicorn, JupiterOne, and led key engineering and sales teams that led to its rapid growth and 8 figure ARR in 2 years.

The Role

As an engineer at Opine, you'll be pivotal in setting our technical and cultural benchmarks. Your role involves architecting key product capabilities and guiding engineering practices. You'll move fast on the product development, and work closely with customers to drive the roadmap based on real-world usage. Your leadership will be crucial in team building, recruitment, and defining our company culture.

Qualifications

We are looking for someone who is able to navigate the full cycle of development. From idea/customer conversation, design of the backend system, design of the frontend experience, and management of the infrastructure. You thrive in a bit of chaos and deeply value the ability to own difficult problems entirely.

  • Care about speed, want to work with extremely high performers, and are able to navigate across the full cycle of development.
  • Strong background building with Node.js, Next.js/React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, or similar web technologies.
  • Strong background using PostgreSQL or similar relational databases.
  • Experience managing cloud infrastructure on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
  • Bonus: Experience with building AI agents, LangChain, Terraform, Databricks, vector databases.
  • Bonus : You have an affinity for writing
What We Offer
  • Significant equity - Our early team should feel like true owners.
  • Competitive base salary - We'll give you a few compensation options that have a salary/equity tradeoff. We care that our employees have the option to optimize for what they care most about.
  • Relocating to Raleigh/Durham, NC - We'll pay to relocate you to be with the team.
  • Collaborative & high-velocity venture - Be a core part of a collaborative and high-velocity venture with deep entrepreneurial roots where you will be deeply embedded in the early product and business decisions.
  • An environment that encourages lightheartedness and humor - We take the business seriously, but that doesn't mean that we need to take ourselves seriously.
Founding Team

We know that joining a startup can be daunting, and getting to know the team is one of the most important aspects of making a decision. Let's get some of that out of the way…

Akash Ganapathi

, CEO

Location : Raleigh/Durham, NC

Prior Experience :

  • Senior Director of Product Strategy, Director of Solutions Architecture at JupiterOne - Helped scale JupiterOne's sales to 8-figure ARR in 2 years, selling to Cloud 100 companies and Fortune 100 companies (e.g., Stripe, Robinhood, Indeed, Cisco, Okta, Databricks).
Austin Kelleher

, Cofounder (Product + Engineering)

Location : Raleigh/Durham, NC

Noteworthy Prior Experience :

  • Founding Engineer (employee #3) at JupiterOne - Responsible for leading the largest engineering team, Integrations. Oversaw the development of hundreds of open-source integrations that converted assets into graph structures, which our customers used for security analysis.
  • Platform Engineer at eBay - Maintainer of open source eBay frontend platform tooling ( Marko, Lasso ), responsible for powering all of eBay's frontend infrastructure and serving 10s of millions of users daily.
  • Developer of multiple successful multiplayer games (100k+ users)
Charlie Duong

, Cofounder (Product + Engineering)

Location : Raleigh/Durham, NC

Noteworthy Prior Experience :

  • Founding Engineer (employee #2) at JupiterOne - Responsible for creating J1QL, the graph query language that all customers used to interface with the JupiterOne graph. Led highly technical efforts that allowed JupiterOne to manage billions of graph nodes on behalf of its customers.
  • Early engineer at health startup, LifeOmic - Maintained CI/CD infrastructure and key services that were responsible for serving millions of LIFE Fasting app users and medical researchers.

Opine is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. We thrive on diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all our team members.