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Founding Engineer Jobs (NOW HIRING)

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 ...

hireVouch

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA

$152K/yr

The role We're hiring a Founding Full‑Stack Engineer to build V1 products end to end. You'll work in a fast, hands‑on environment, iterating quickly with customers to solve real clinical workflow ...

Rockstar

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

The Role The client is looking for a Founding Engineer to own how they build software. For a person with the right background, they are open to this becoming the team lead as the team is built ...

New

Embedding VC

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Our founding team is made up of pioneers in AI agents - staff and principal engineers who built foundational systems in the early days of Facebook, Databricks, LangChain, and Brex. CEO is a 2x ...

Rockstar

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

The Role The client is looking for a Founding Engineer to own how they build software. For a person with the right background, they are open to this becoming the team lead as the team is built ...

New

Brainbase Labs

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$140K - $225K/yr

I'd like to join, but I don't think I'm founding engineer material If you're in doubt, and satisfy the Must Have's from above, you should apply. We love having exceptional people join our team in any ...

Lava

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

Founding Engineer - Lava (NYC) About Lava: Be on the ground floor of how the world builds and monetizes AI. AI is driving a fundamental shift in software economics. Legacy SaaS models were built for ...

AngelList

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$200K/yr

This is a founding engineer role on a zero-to-one product with meaningful distribution, regulatory complexity, and infrastructure leverage. You'll work closely with product, design, compliance, and ...

Terac

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$140K - $210K/yr

Founding Engineer Terac helps teams reach faster research breakthroughs through our marketplace of verified experts. We are building agents to recruit, verify, and match 10,000s experts with 1000s of ...

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 ...

Ropes AI, Inc

Founding Engineer

New York, NY · On-site

DR: We're looking for founding engineers to help us reinvent technical interviewing and transform how the $600B+ staffing industry operates. About Ropes Ropes is building a new way for companies to ...

Hirevouch

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$152K/yr

The role We're hiring a Founding FullStack Engineer to build V1 products end to end. You'll work in a fast, handson environment, iterating quickly with customers to solve real clinical workflow ...

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 ...

Lava

Founding Engineer

New York, NY

Founding Engineer - Lava (NYC) About Lava: Be on the ground floor of how the world builds and monetizes AI. AI is driving a fundamental shift in software economics. Legacy SaaS models were built for ...

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How much do founding engineer jobs pay per year?

As of May 29, 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 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.
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Founding Engineer jobs near you

Founding Engineer -- Wildcard

David Joseph & Company

San Francisco, CA

$160K - $200K/yr

Full-time

Posted 16 days ago

Job description

Founding Engineer — Wildcard

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite)
Compensation: $160,000 – $200,000 base + competitive founding equity
Visa Sponsorship: Not available
Experience Level: 1.5–5 years
Employment Type: Full-Time

About Wildcard

Wildcard is a YC-backed AI commerce startup building the AI SEO platform for retail and ecommerce brands competing in ChatGPT Shopping and emerging AI commerce ecosystems. As AI increasingly replaces traditional search, Wildcard helps brands monitor product visibility across AI engines, optimize product data and onsite content for AI recommendations, and enable instant checkout directly within ChatGPT through OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol.

  • 6 live brand customers
  • 12 new brand meetings booked weekly
  • Founded by a former Scale AI engineering manager who built marketplace and product data systems for Walmart, Coupang, and Shopify
  • 2.5 years of runway secured after planned hires
About the Role

This is Wildcard's first engineering hire — a true Founding Engineer role where the selected candidate will help define product direction, technical architecture, engineering culture, and execution strategy from day one. This is not joining an established engineering team. This is helping build the company's engineering function from scratch.

The market is evolving rapidly around agentic commerce, AI shopping, and emerging AI discovery channels. The ideal candidate must be energized by ambiguity, speed, ownership, rapid pivots, and direct product decision-making.

What You'll Own
  • Own the full stack across frontend and backend development
  • Build AI agents, MCP servers, and emerging AI product surfaces
  • Develop incrementality and attribution systems tied directly to ecommerce revenue outcomes
  • Scale browser orchestration, retrieval infrastructure, and AI commerce automation systems
  • Improve production reliability through queues, retries, observability, and workflow orchestration
  • Work directly with customers to convert product needs into shipped features
  • Shape engineering standards, architecture, and technical culture from the ground up
  • Adapt systems quickly as AI platforms, protocols, and agent ecosystems evolve
Requirements
  • Recent experience at a Series A, Series B, or similarly fast-moving high-signal startup
  • Clear evidence of startup speed, ownership, and adaptability
  • Experience building AI agents or agent-based systems in production
  • Strong full-stack engineering capability across TypeScript, Node.js, Express, React, and Next.js
  • High agency, resilience, ownership mentality, and comfort wearing multiple hats
  • Ability to independently ship across the stack without relying heavily on others
  • Willingness to work onsite in San Francisco
Nice to Have
  • Top 50 academic background preferred
  • Postgres, Redis, async jobs, queues
  • Browser automation, scraping, retrieval infrastructure
  • Production observability and reliability engineering
  • AI agent orchestration, context management, eval systems
  • MCP servers, developer tooling, workflow products
  • Ecommerce, retail infrastructure, attribution, analytics, search systems
  • Codebases designed for agent interoperability
  • Background from Profound, Browserbase, Ramp, Hyperbound, Triple Whale, Scale AI, or high-velocity YC/Series A/B startups
This Role Is NOT For
  • Big tech-only backgrounds without startup execution proof
  • Multiple short tenures without clear shipped outcomes
  • Pure backend engineers without product ownership or full-stack independence
  • Candidates unable to operate without heavy direction or structure
Logistics
  • Role is fully onsite in San Francisco — please only apply if you can commit to this
  • No visa sponsorship available

Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by David Joseph & Co., the recruiting partner managing this search on behalf of Wildcard.