Founding Software Engineer

About the company Our client is a fast-growing software company. The role Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Act as an early, senior-level product engineer who owns features from first concept through production. Build customer-facing applications and the backend services behind them, with a focus on AI-driven automation that can be trusted. Work directly with customers to gather requirements and help shape the roadmap. What you'll do - Build new functionality end to end, from the backend logic to the user interface people use every day. - Own the underlying framework that lets AI-driven automation manage context, coordinate tasks, keep state and request human sign-off on important actions. - Develop backend APIs, third-party integrations, background jobs and data pipelines that turn messy inputs into clean, reliable data. - Make automated AI features dependable through evaluations based on real workflows, failure tracing, recovery and escalation paths, and model choices informed by production results. - Build polished web interfaces with React alongside the backend services that power them. - Speak with customers, gather requirements and, where needed, take ownership of customer-specific workflows. - Learn from production usage and contribute to the roadmap and strategic decisions. Requirements What we're looking for - 1 to 3 years of software engineering experience, with strength in product engineering using React and/or LLM-based applications. - Solid fundamentals in Python or JavaScript/TypeScript, and willingness to become productive in both. - Hands-on experience launching autonomous AI features into production, including building and debugging the supporting framework. - Experience working across multiple model providers. - A substantial project you can discuss in depth, including architecture, trade-offs, limitations and what you would change. - Close attention to messy details such as missing data, duplicates, unexpected inputs and confusing user experiences. - Founder mindset with strong ownership, agency and comfort turning vague problems into finished work. - Good product intuition and taste, with care for the reasons behind what gets built. - Strong communication skills and comfort working directly with customers. - Early-stage startup experience is strongly preferred. Bonus points - Familiarity with retrieval techniques, data modeling, and evaluation, tracing, cost and permissions practices. - Experience as a founder or building something real. Benefits Compensation and benefits - Base salary: USD 150,000 to 220,000 per year - Equity - Health, dental and medical coverage Location and work model - New York, NY, United States - On-site - Full-time