Founding Engineer

An early-stage, venture-backed startup in the food manufacturing technology space is seeking a Founding Engineer to own technical direction and build the platform from zero to one. This company is reimagining how the trillion-dollar U.S. food manufacturing industry operates — developing AI-driven systems that automate sales, order management, and food safety workflows.

This is a ground-floor opportunity to define the technical vision, shape engineering culture, and scale a product that addresses massive inefficiencies in a critical sector. The role comes with significant ownership, and there’s room to explore a co-founder title for the right candidate.

This would be 3 days per week onsite in San Francisco and visa sponsorship is available for TN1 candidates only.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead technical architecture and product development from inception to scale.
• Design, build, and deploy AI agents that drive automation and efficiency in core business workflows.
• Translate industry challenges into scalable, production-grade systems.
• Collaborate closely with the founding team to shape product strategy, engineering culture, and long-term vision.
• Build and lead the engineering team as the company grows.

Key Qualifications:

• 5–10 years of experience as a full-stack engineer, with strong ability to build and lead at the technical level.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field (top-tier university preferred).
• Proven experience building and scaling products from 0?1, ideally AI-focused.
• Previous founding or early-stage startup experience (Pre-Seed to Series B).
• Deep knowledge of higher-level AI development, including:
• Tooling: agent-environment interactions and integrations.
• Evals: frameworks for measuring and improving agent performance.
• Has built AI agents that serve as the core product offering (not peripheral features).
• Strong proficiency in Python, TypeScript, React, and Node.js.
• Experience working with APIs, data connectors, and large-scale databases (SQL).
• Exceptional communication skills — able to engage effectively with technical and non-technical audiences, including customers.
• Ambitious, mission-driven, and motivated to become the technical head of a growing company.