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Founding Front End Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Hercules

Frontend Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site +1

$100K - $250K/yr

Hercules is looking for a senior or staff level frontend software engineer to help us build the ... Hercules founding team works in-office in San Francisco (Kearny and Bush). We have a very strong ...

Voxquill

Senior Frontend Engineer - React

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$200K - $300K/yr

You'd make frontend architecture calls that stick, in a codebase young enough that they matter. You ... What's on offer $200K-$300K base depending on experience, plus competitive founding equity. 100 ...

Hikinex

Founding Design Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Founding Design Engineer Location: San Francisco, CA (On-site, 5 days/week) Compensation: $150,000 ... Own product design and frontend implementation from concept to production. * Design and build ...

HIKINEX

Founding Design Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Founding Design Engineer Location: San Francisco, CA (On-site, 5 days/week) Compensation: $150,000 ... Own product design and frontend implementation from concept to production. * Design and build ...

Serval Inc

Software Engineer, Frontend

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$200K - $325K/yr

Role Overview As a Senior Frontend Engineer at Serval, you'll play a pivotal role in shaping the ... founding team. * Set the foundational system architecture and select key technologies for the ...

F2

Staff Software Engineer, Frontend

San Francisco, CA · On-site

The role involves collaborating closely with the founding team to architect, develop, and scale F2's AI-driven enterprise UI platform while mentoring engineers and ensuring frontend engineering ...

Serval

Software Engineer, Frontend

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Role Overview As a Senior Frontend Engineer at Serval, you'll play a pivotal role in shaping the ... founding team. * Set the foundational system architecture and select key technologies for the ...

Tacit

Frontend Product Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$160K - $210K/yr

We are backed by General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, and Greylock Partners, with a founding team ... About the role We are looking for a frontend product engineer to turn early ideas, prototypes, and ...

Clera

Founding Design Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$180K - $220K/yr

About the Role This is a founding-level design engineering role at a seed-stage AI pricing platform ... Define and enforce frontend patterns using React Query, React Hook Form, and Zod so that agent ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$97K - $129K/yr

About the Role Join a pre-seed AI startup as Engineer #4 on the founding team, working directly ... Build scalable frontend interfaces with React * Integrate AI/ML capabilities using providers such ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$97K - $129K/yr

About the Role Join a pre-seed AI startup as Engineer #4 on the founding team, working directly ... Build scalable frontend interfaces with React * Integrate AI/ML capabilities using providers such ...

Fabrion

Founding Engineer

Bodega Bay, CA · On-site

You'll be writing production code across backend and frontend, defining interfaces between ... founding engineer, or a 0-1 pre-seed startup is a big plus Mindset: * Comfortable with ambiguity ...

Fabrion, Inc

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

You'll be writing production code across backend and frontend, defining interfaces between ... founding engineer, or a 0-1 pre-seed startup is a big plus Mindset: * Comfortable with ambiguity ...

Wilson

Founding Designer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

The role We are looking for an exceptional Founding Design Engineer with outstanding aesthetic taste and strong frontend engineering skills. You will work very closely with our CTO, interface ...

Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$120K - $250K/yr

Experience building frontend applications with React and TypeScript * Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, deployment workflows, and production monitoring/observability

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Founding Front End Engineer information

What is a founding front end engineer?

A Founding Front End Engineer is one of the first technical hires at a startup, responsible for designing and building the user-facing aspects of the company's products from the ground up. This role involves working closely with founders to set the technical direction, make key architectural decisions, and establish best practices for front-end development. Founding Front End Engineers often influence product strategy and help shape the company culture. They typically have broad responsibilities that may include prototyping, scaling applications, and mentoring future team members.

What unique challenges and opportunities can a founding front end engineer expect when joining an early-stage startup?

As a Founding Front End Engineer at an early-stage startup, you'll be tasked with building core user-facing features from the ground up, often with limited resources and shifting priorities. This role typically involves collaborating closely with founders, designers, and back-end engineers to quickly iterate on product ideas and deliver a seamless user experience. The fast-paced environment offers significant opportunities for ownership, rapid learning, and direct impact on product direction. However, it also requires adaptability, strong problem-solving skills, and comfort with ambiguity as the product and team evolve.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a founding front end engineer, and why are they important?

To thrive as a Founding Front End Engineer, you need strong expertise in JavaScript frameworks (such as React or Vue), HTML/CSS, and experience building scalable web applications, often supported by a degree in computer science or equivalent experience. Familiarity with version control systems (like Git), CI/CD tools, and modern front-end build processes is expected. Initiative, problem-solving, and effective communication are crucial soft skills, as early-stage teams require adaptability and collaboration. These skills and qualities are essential for rapidly delivering high-quality user experiences and shaping the technical foundation of a growing startup.

What cities in California are hiring for Founding Front End Engineer jobs?

Cities in California with the most Founding Front End Engineer job openings:

Infographic showing various Founding Front End Engineer job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 78% Full Time, 16% Part Time, 2% Temporary, and 4% Contract. Highlights an 91% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 6% Remote job distribution.

Frontend Engineer

San Francisco, CA • On-site, Remote

Hercules
See more jobs at Herculesexternal

$100K - $250K/yr

Full-time

Medical, Dental, Vision, PTO

Re-posted 22 days ago

Key responsibilities

  • Build and own user-facing interfaces and experiences across Hercules products, including AI Agent, App Builder, Mobile app, and marketing pages.

  • Develop features and maintain the frontend codebase using technologies such as TypeScript and React.

  • Collaborate on designing and implementing UI/UX with a focus on frontend innovations.

Job description

What are we looking for?
Hercules is looking for a senior or staff level frontend software engineer to help us build the future of AI software development
What will you do?
You will build and own user-facing interfaces and experiences across Hercules including our
  • AI Agent, the AI harness that enables anyone to build powerful full-stack applications
  • App Builder, the interface that makes it ridiculously easy to build, preview, and deploy apps
  • Mobile app, our PWA-based mobile building experience
  • Marketing pages, our public display pages for products, features, and docs

What skills do we expect you to have?
We expect candidates to be incredibly strong across all of the following areas:
  • Software fundamentals: system design, architecture, data modeling, and API design
  • Code and codebase quality: write clean, maintainable code. Work effectively in monorepos
  • Product sense: track record of independently shipping lots of features to customers
  • Design sense: beautiful, opinionated sense of UX/UI using cutting-edge frontend innovations
  • Our core stack: TypeScript, React, (and ideally some containers, Postgres, and Redis experience)
  • AI: able to truly 10x your workflow by being on frontier of AI coding

What's Hercules' stack?
  • Technologies: Typescript, React, AI SDK, Postgres, Redis, Clickhouse, Tailwind, IaC (CDK, Terraform), Docker, Otel, Hono, Drizzle ORM, Temporal
  • Clouds: Cloudflare, AWS
  • AI Models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google

What are Hercules' operating principles?
Hercules' operating principles guide how we make decisions every day. We take them very seriously. Most of the principles can be learned on the job, however, we do specifically filter for the following principles in our hiring process:
  1. We ship. We ship fast, iterate, and correct mistakes quickly. Our bias for action speeds up our learning and delights our customers.
  2. We strive for excellence. Doing things well is in our DNA. We have good taste. We get the details right. Our outputs are exceptionally simple and self-serve. We're proud of our work.
  3. We are hungry. We are willing to work hard and break through walls to achieve the outcomes we want. We are willing to operate at any level to get things done.

Is Hercules in-office or remote?
Hercules founding team works in-office in San Francisco (Kearny and Bush). We have a very strong preference for in office. We are open to remote for exceptional candidates who is willing to 1) work in US time zones and 2) travel to the office regularly.
What are Hercules' benefits?
  • Unlimited AI token budget
  • Take what you need vacation policy
  • Healthcare, vision, and dental
  • Daily lunches, dinners and snacks in the office
  • We guarantee you will do the best work of your career here

What's the compensation?
$100k-$250k + equity (variable based on seniority, equity, and location)

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