Founding Engineer
- Location
- San Francisco
- Work mode
- On-site
- Employment type
- Full-time
About the job
ABOUT THE ROLE
Join an early-stage AI company as its first engineering hire, working closely with the founder to turn a working AI-powered service business product into scalable infrastructure. You will shape the architecture and technical foundations for AI agents supporting real-world business operations, with the opportunity to grow into a CTO role as the company develops.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Rebuild and scale the existing product into infrastructure designed to support substantial user growth.
- Design and operate the agent runtime, including orchestration, memory, verification, and reliability systems.
- Build across backend, infrastructure, frontend, and AI agents, taking projects from design through production.
- Set technical architecture, engineering standards, and development practices as the first engineer.
- Ship product improvements regularly to customers running real businesses.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- At least 2 years of experience shipping production software, or an equivalent record as a founder, solo builder, or exceptional early-career engineer.
- Full-stack range across backend, infrastructure, and user-facing product development, with the ability to make technical decisions independently.
- Hands-on experience building and operating LLM or AI agent systems used by real customers, not just prototypes or demos.
- Experience taking a working product or prototype to reliable production infrastructure, including architecture, data models, runtime, or orchestration.
- Strong generalist engineering skills and the ability to explain the technical challenges behind systems you have built.
- Experience with agent orchestration, memory, evaluations, verification, or multi-agent workflows is valuable. Background in service businesses such as recruiting or agencies is also useful.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Base salary is $150,000 to $250,000 annually, plus meaningful founding equity. Visa sponsorship and relocation support are available.
LOCATION
On-site in San Francisco, California. The team works together in person.
From Clera's careers page (Ashby), checked 27 Oct 2026.
How to apply
- Select Apply on getclera.com. It opens Clera's own application form in a new tab, run on Ashby.
- Fill in the form and upload your résumé there. Jobiwork never sees your application.
- Clera will reply to you directly. No real employer asks you for money to apply.
Posted 23 Oct 2026 · checked 27 Oct 2026 · Report this job
