Founding Engineer (AI)

Location: On-site in San Francisco, five days a week

Salary: $200,000–$250,000 base salary, plus equity

Company

An early-stage, YC-backed AI infrastructure company building an open-source AI Gateway for routing LLM APIs with cost tracking, guardrails, load balancing, and logging.

What you will do

• Build the company's second major product line from concept to production in partnership with the founders.
• Talk directly to customers, identify pain points, validate solutions, and turn feedback into shipped features.
• Develop end-to-end product features using Python and FastAPI.
• Own major product areas across backend APIs, dashboards, infrastructure, and developer experience.
• Prototype quickly, iterate on user feedback, and ship in an ambiguous early-stage environment.

Requirements

• 2+ years of experience in AI engineering with production code and direct user interaction experience.
• Bachelor's degree from a top-25 U.S. computer science program.
• Production Python development experience; FastAPI is preferred.
• Comfort working across backend, frontend, APIs, and infrastructure.
• Hands-on experience with LLM APIs or AI infrastructure such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Azure, or Vertex AI.
• Strong communication skills and a track record of high-ownership work in a startup, top technology company, or entrepreneurial project.

Nice to have

• Active GitHub profile, previous startup founder experience, or standout independent projects or competitions.

Culture & Benefits

• Founding-level ownership with direct access to founders and customers.
• Competitive equity positioned at the top of the market for seed-stage founding engineers.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including FSA.
• Visa transfers are supported for OPT and H1B candidates.
• Relocation stipend for candidates moving within the United States.

Hiring process

• Initial 15–30-minute screen covering fit, interest, product intuition, and customer interaction.
• 60-minute technical interview covering production engineering, Python, full-stack delivery, product design, and system design.
• Four-hour on-site interview covering engineering fundamentals, problem-solving, product thinking, system design, culture fit, and startup mentality.