Founding Engineer

Clera

$150K — $175K *
Enterprise Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Track record of building and operating production software systems end-to-end.
  • Hands-on experience with AI agents or LLM-based systems in substantial projects.
  • Experience with Python and FastAPI for backend service development.
  • Familiarity with data pipelines and infrastructure for relational/analytical data stores.
  • Frontend development skills using TypeScript and React for real-time features.
  • Ability to create systems for parsing and data reconciliation from unstructured sources.
  • Cloud infrastructure experience with AWS, Cloudflare, or similar platforms.

Responsibilities

  • Work across the full technology stack to deliver frontend features, data pipelines, and agent infrastructure.
  • Build real-time systems to keep users updated with the latest information.
  • Create internal tools to enhance data analysis and coverage speed.
  • Improve AI agent reliability and operational capabilities.
  • Own the entire project lifecycle from data inspection to production fixes.
  • Add new information sources and implement improvements early in your tenure.
  • Develop company ontologies and core product modules within the first month.

Benefits

  • Equity opportunity as part of the founding team.
  • Hands-on experience in a Y Combinator-backed startup environment.
Full Job Description
About the Role

Join a three-person founding team in New York and help build the full-stack systems powering agentic operations that handle thousands of jobs daily. As a Founding Engineer, you'll shape how the product makes its AI agents dependable - through reliable tooling, durable execution, and strong observability - while owning work across frontend, data infrastructure, and AI orchestration.

This is a high-ownership, end-to-end role at an early-stage Y Combinator-backed company operating at the intersection of financial research, healthcare data, and applied AI. You'll be expected to inspect data, ship improvements, instrument what you build, and fix it in production when it breaks.
What You'll Do
  • Work across the entire stack to ship frontend features, data pipelines, and agent infrastructure.
  • Build real-time, customer-facing systems that keep users informed as information changes.
  • Create internal tools and data pipelines that enable analysts to add sources and maintain sector coverage faster and more reliably.
  • Improve the tooling and capabilities that make AI agents more reliable and capable in production.
  • Own projects end to end: inspect the data, QA and instrument your work, ship it, and fix it in production.
  • Add a new information source on day one, ship improvements to parsing and extraction within your first week, and build a company ontology and the first version of a core product module within 30 days.
What We're Looking For

Must-haves:
  • Demonstrated track record of building, shipping, and operating production software systems end-to-end.
  • Hands-on experience using AI agents or LLM-based systems to accomplish real work in production or substantial projects.
  • Experience building deterministic software tools and controls used alongside AI agent systems.
  • Backend service development with Python and FastAPI (or equivalent Python frameworks) in production.
  • Database, data pipeline, and data infrastructure experience - including relational and analytical data stores.
  • Frontend development with TypeScript and React, including real-time customer-facing features.
  • Experience building parsing, extraction, or data reconciliation systems from unstructured or semi-structured sources.
  • Experience improving AI agent reliability, observability, or tool design for production agentic workflows.
  • Cloud infrastructure and deployment experience with AWS, Cloudflare, or equivalent platforms.
  • US work authorization required - visa sponsorship is not available.

Nice-to-haves:
  • Capital markets, financial data, or equity research domain experience.
  • Experience with DBOS, Neon, MotherDuck, Turbopuffer, dbt, or similar modern data stack tools.
  • Experience building knowledge graphs, ontologies, or structured data models from unstructured information sources.

We welcome candidates at any experience level, including recent graduates, provided they have genuine depth in backend engineering, data infrastructure, applied AI, or product engineering.
Tech Stack
  • Backend: Python, FastAPI, DBOS
  • Frontend: TypeScript, React
  • Data: Postgres, Neon, MotherDuck, Turbopuffer, dbt
  • Infrastructure: AWS, Cloudflare
Compensation & Benefits
  • Salary: $150,000 - $175,000 USD annually
  • Early-stage equity opportunity commensurate with a founding-team role
Location
  • On-site in New York, NY, United States
  • This is an in-person role - remote work is not available
  • Visa sponsorship is not available; US work authorization is required

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