Founding Engineer
ABOUT THE ROLE
This is the first engineering hire at an early-stage AI infrastructure startup that has a working product, live revenue, and a clear mandate: rebuild what works into agentic infrastructure that can serve a million users. You will work directly with the founder, owning architecture and technical direction with no engineering organisation above you, and the expectation is that this becomes a CTO seat as the team grows.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Redesign and scale a working agentic system into production infrastructure capable of handling significant user load.
- Design and operate the agent runtime, covering orchestration, memory, verification, and the reliability machinery that makes an AI workforce trustworthy.
- Own work end to end across backend, infrastructure, frontend, and agent layers.
- Set the technical stack, engineering bar, and team norms as the person who is defining them.
- Ship to real business customers on a weekly cadence.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- At least 2 years shipping production software, or an equivalent record of building and launching real systems as a founder or solo builder; strong younger engineers are explicitly in scope.
- Demonstrated experience building and running LLM or AI agent systems in production with real users depending on them, not demos or side projects.
- Full-stack range: able to take work from backend and infrastructure through to the UI without waiting for a specialist.
- Proven ability to turn a working prototype into infrastructure that holds real load, including architecture, data modelling, runtime, and orchestration.
- Track record of owning technical decisions with no engineering hierarchy above you, as a founder, early hire, or solo technical lead.
- Founder instincts: ex-founders or co-founders are a strong signal.
- Experience with agent orchestration, agent memory, evals, verification systems, or multi-agent workflows is a strong plus.
- Familiarity with recruiting, agency, or service-delivery businesses is a bonus given the active verticals.
- Strong CS fundamentals, whether from a university background or a well-regarded engineering environment, are a welcome signal but never a requirement.
- Based in Europe and genuinely open to relocating to San Francisco within the first year.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Salary range: EUR 80,000 to EUR 140,000 annually. Equity is part of the package given the founding-hire nature of the role. Relocation support and US visa sponsorship are available from day one.
LOCATION
Fully remote within Europe to start, with a planned relocation to San Francisco as the company establishes its US presence. Visa sponsorship and relocation assistance are provided.
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