Founding Lead Engineer

New York City | Permanent

$180,000 – $250,000

Industry

  • Artificial Intelligence

About the company

The hiring company is an early-stage AI startup that has raised $6M in seed funding and is backed by leading institutional investors and a well-regarded startup community. The founder has previously built and exited a successful business. The product is AI-native from the ground up and is focused on an ambitious, category-defining vision.

About the role

This is a founding engineering role with significant technical and strategic ownership. You will be responsible for leading the build of the core product at a formative stage, working closely with the founder to shape both the technical architecture and the long-term direction of the platform.

The company is tackling the fragmentation of personal and professional data across countless tools and platforms. By consolidating these disparate data sources, the goal is to create a highly personalised, AI-driven system that functions as a scalable digital representation of an individual—capable of understanding context, preferences, and behaviour at a deep level.

As a vertical AI play, the challenge lies in deeply understanding each user rather than optimising for generic use cases. The work sits at the intersection of data aggregation, AI-driven personalisation, and product infrastructure, with many foundational decisions still to be made.

Perks:

  • Founding-level ownership and influence over technical direction
  • Opportunity to build an AI-native product from first principles
  • Competitive salary aligned with early-stage risk and impact
  • Direct collaboration with a repeat founder
  • Backing from highly credible early-stage investors

Requirements:

  • Strong experience with React and TypeScript on the frontend
  • Backend experience with Node and/or Python
  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience

Sounds good?

Apply now

For more information, connect with our specialised team member on LinkedIn

Ralfi Ibaj

Talent Consultant

NYC-based recruiter placing founding software engineers at early-stage startups.