Title: Founding AI Product Engineer
Reporting to: Krrish CEO (Co-Founder)
Business Need for the Hire:
- Build LiteLLM's second major product alongside the founders.
- Bring on an engineer who can own product development end-to-end, from customer discovery through production.
- Increase product velocity while maintaining close relationships with users.
- Help define product direction as one of the company's first dedicated Product Engineers.
Wider Team and Where This Role Sits:
- Reports directly to Krrish.
- Founding Product Engineer working closely with the founders and engineering team.
- Approximately 50% coding / 50% customer interaction, speaking directly with developers to validate ideas and improve the product.
- One Product Engineer is currently transitioning internally, making this a foundational hire for the team.
Essential Skills Required to Interview a Candidate:
- 2+ years of software engineering experience.
- Strong Python fundamentals (expertise not required).
- Experience building production software from idea to launch.
- Comfortable working across backend APIs, infrastructure, and developer tooling.
- Strong customer empathy and communication skills.
- Startup mentality-comfortable operating in ambiguity and moving quickly.
- Experience building products that gained real users is a significant plus.
- Strong Computer Science fundamentals (top CS programs are viewed favorably but not required).
Questions to Screen Candidates:
- In your ideal role, how much time would you spend coding versus talking to users?
- Tell me about a time you shipped something quickly with incomplete information.
- Tell me about a product you've built from idea to launch.
- Have you built anything that attracted real users? How did you find those users?
- How do you gather customer feedback and decide what to build next?
- Why are you interested in building developer tools and AI infrastructure?
Interview Process:
30-minute introductory conversation with Krrish. Virtual technical interview (coding and product-thinking; no AI assistance) including: - Whiteboard and coding exercise.
San Francisco onsite mock customer discovery/product design session. Selling Points of the Role/Company:
- Founding Product Engineer role with significant ownership.
- Work directly with the founders every day.
- Build LiteLLM's second major product from the ground up.
- 50/50 balance between engineering and product/customer discovery.
- Gateway powering 100+ LLM providers.
- Trusted by companies including Adobe, Netflix, NASA, NVIDIA, and OpenAI.
- ~$15M ARR and growing rapidly while remaining profitable after only a Seed round.
- Small, high-impact engineering team where work ships to production quickly.
- Opportunity to influence product strategy rather than simply implementing features.
- Build products used by thousands of engineering teams worldwide.
Location:
- San Francisco, CA
- 5 days/week onsite
Salary:
- $200K-260K base
- Exceptional candidates on case to case basic can flex to $300K base. This range will be reviewed directly by the founders.
Benefits:
- Competitive equity package
- Medical, Dental & Vision
- 401(k)
- Health benefits
Bonus:
- Performance bonus on a case-by-case basis.
Equity:
- 0.1-0.2%, depending on experience and level.
Visa Sponsorship/Relocation Package:
- Visa sponsorship available.
- Relocation assistance available.
- Potential sign-on bonuses typically $5K-10K to offset forfeited equity, with flexibility for exceptional candidates.
Ideal Start Date:
CV Feedback & Interview Feedback Agreed SLAs:
- Feedback provided immediately after interviews whenever possible.
Additional Notes:
- Looking for builders who naturally create products people actually use.
- Open-source contributions or side projects are strong differentiators.
- Values curiosity, customer empathy, and hustle over being a Python or Rust expert.
- Typical workload is approximately 60 hours/week, reflecting an early-stage startup environment.
- Founders care more about a candidate's ability to build meaningful products than years of experience alone.
- Candidates with exceptional backgrounds or standout products should be surfaced directly to the founders.
