Founding Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE

This is a rare, high-impact founding engineer position at an early-stage consumer AI startup building a real-time, AI-enabled platform to digitize human connection. You'll work directly alongside the founder — a Thiel Fellow — as one of the first engineers, shaping both the product and the engineering culture from the ground up. This is a fully on-site role in San Francisco.

You'll take on broad technical ownership across a bold consumer product focused on scalable, meaningful human interactions — integrating cutting-edge real-time video, audio, and memory systems.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Work across all aspects of the application alongside the founder, designers, and other engineers.
• Build new systems for memory, retrieval, proactivity, and AI responsiveness.
• Integrate the latest internal and external real-time video generation and audio synthesis models.
• Set the bar for engineering quality and help recruit world-class talent to the team.
• Dogfood the product extensively — you genuinely care about real user value and quality.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

Required

• 2–7 years of software engineering experience (not a new grad — some professional engineering experience is required).
• Computer Science degree from a top-tier university.
• Strong CS fundamentals.
• High energy, exceptionally bright, and driven to build fast.
• Proven entrepreneurial spirit — startup exposure or experience in fast-moving, ambiguous environments.
• Track record of technically complex side projects or independent builds.
• Comfortable with — and excited by — early-stage chaos and the demands of a founding team environment.

Nice to Have

• Experience with real-time media, vision or video models, audio synthesis, or voice systems.
• Experience with memory and retrieval systems or agentic AI architectures.
• Proficiency in Python, including typed scientific Python.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted or agentic development tooling.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

• Salary: $175,000 – $225,000 per year
• Equity as a founding team member
• Visa sponsorship available

LOCATION

This role is fully on-site in San Francisco, CA. Candidates must be willing and able to work in-person full-time. Remote work is not available for this position.