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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 ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$175K - $225K/yr

About the Role Join a fast-moving, early-stage consumer AI startup as a Founding Engineer -- a rare, high-impact position working directly alongside the founder. This is a true 1-of-1 opportunity to ...

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Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$150K - $220K/yr

About the Role A seed-stage AI data infrastructure startup in San Francisco is looking for a Founding Engineer with 1+ years of professional experience shipping to production. This is a foundational ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$175K - $225K/yr

About the Role Join a fast-moving, early-stage consumer AI startup as a Founding Engineer - a rare, high-impact position working directly alongside the founder. This is a true 1-of-1 opportunity to ...

Proaction

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

They are seeking a Founding Engineer to architect and scale their core platform, working closely with the CTO to define system architecture and establish engineering standards. Responsibilities : • ...

Interface

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Interface is looking for generalist founding engineers (ml, data, full-stack) who are scrappy, push boundaries and have a need to win. We need to work hard and build quick to win. We want people to ...

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 ...

Infinite Agents, Inc

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$130K - $230K/yr

The opportunity As our Founding Engineer , you will define, build, and maintain the technical foundation of our platform. You will join us in-person in a fast-paced, high-ownership environment where ...

Clera

Founding Engineer Intern

San Francisco, CA · On-site

As a Founding Engineer Intern , you'll work directly alongside the CTO to ship features daily and help build a fully agentic system that automates headhunting end-to-end. This role puts you at the ...

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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 ...

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Ploy

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

They are seeking a Founding Engineer to work on multi-agent systems and infrastructure that enhances website performance and customer engagement. Responsibilities : • Multi-agent systems that plan ...

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 ...

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 ...

HMBL

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

We're seeking a Founding Software Engineer for an early staged AI & LLM startup based in San Francisco. About the Role * Hands on experience developing technology using Python * A builder of business ...

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 ...

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 ...

Mobasi

Founding Engineer

Austin, TX · On-site

Mobasi is hiring a founding engineer to own infrastructure, DevOps, and productionization as we scale from our first pilots to dozens of customers this year. You'll be our first hire outside the ...

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 ...

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Founding Engineer information

See salary details

$30K

$69.4K

$118K

How much do founding engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Jul 1, 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 June 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% Internship, 82% Full Time, 13% Part Time, 3% Temporary, and 1% Contract. Highlights an 89% Physical, 4% Hybrid, and 7% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $69,362 per year, or $33.3 per hour.
Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer

Upside

New York, NY • On-site

$150K - $200K/yr

Full-time

Posted 10 days ago

Job description

Upside is a referral partnership platform for professional services. We're enabling the future of work where most knowledge workers do some form of consulting or advising - either full-time or on the side. 82% of knowledge workers want to diversify their work outside of a single employer, but only 1 in 3 who want in are doing it. Most people do not want to market their own services publicly or become Linkedin thought leaders. Upside solves this by enabling people to privately get clients from their network and earn money by making referrals to others.
Our founding team are repeat founders and alums of Y Combinator, Amazon, and Venture for America. We've built freelance marketplaces, tools, and professional networks before, and our past companies have been backed by investors like Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, and Bloomberg Beta. Upside builds on everything we've learned over the course of our careers so far.
With Upside we're taking a different approach from traditional freelance and professional networks. We're building the bottoms-up SaaS that helps people power their own referral networks. We're in paid private beta with a user base that's growing significantly month over month, with multiple case studies of users making 6-figures in net new income via Upside.
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're often the first to roll up your sleeves and get into the trenches to solve a problem, and have a strong bias for throughput. While you love engineering, you're driven first and foremost by serving and shipping valuable stuff for customers. Maybe you've built and scaled products from scratch before, or maybe you're itching to take on that challenge for the first time.
Why you might be excited about us:
  • Our founding team has all worked together before, and we have a great operating rhythm for someone new to plug into
  • Our customers are impressive people who are a joy to work with and learn from
  • You'll have a lot of flexibility in your role and will be able to help define what it looks like and where you want to go over time
  • You'll be the fourth person on our team and will get deep exposure to every part of the business
  • We're firmly committed to in-person (3 days/wk in our Lower Manhattan office). We believe IRL collaboration is essential in the early stages of company-building.

Why you might not be excited about us:
  • We're small, so if you like more established companies, this role isn't for you. You'll help create our company's culture.
  • You should be comfortable with ambiguity. This is not the kind of job where you show up and we tell you exactly what to do every day.

Ideal candidates have the following qualities:
  • Strong full-stack web development experience
  • Relish the opportunity to be the sole engineer and work with our product lead to build tech from scratch, quickly
  • Good product instincts and interest in contributing to the growth of Upside beyond just engineering
  • Familiarity with the problem we're solving, including doing some form of consulting/freelancing/contracting in the past
  • 4-10+ years professional experience
  • Based in NYC (or willing to relocate)

Our values
  • Be positive sum, not extractive
  • Align incentives, don't rely on good intentions
  • Humbly serve our customers and learn from them
  • Be high-throughput and build leverage as we go
  • Enable upward mobility for ourselves and others
  • People invest things other than money so treat everyone like an investor

Compensation
$150,000 - $200,000 + equity

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