Founding Engineer

Clera

$156K — $182K *
Finance & Insurance
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 2 to 7 years of experience in building and operating production systems end to end.
  • Hands-on with deploying AI or LLM applications in live environments.
  • Proficient in full-stack development (Python, TypeScript, React).
  • Experienced in ETL, data modeling, and SQL for data infrastructure.
  • Skilled in PostgreSQL or similar databases for design and optimization.
  • Familiar with observability and debugging in distributed systems.
  • Knowledge of AWS cloud solutions and real-time data systems.
  • Ability to discern between AI reasoning and deterministic logic.
  • Must be a US citizen; no visa sponsorship available.
  • Bonus: Experience in capital markets or financial services.

Responsibilities

  • Ship features across the full stack from frontend to backend.
  • Build data pipelines and internal tools for faster analyst input.
  • Enhance AI agent performance in parsing and extraction tasks.
  • Take ownership from data inspection to production issue resolution.
  • Integrate new data sources and improve system reliability within the first month.

Benefits

  • Work in a founding team at a Y Combinator-backed startup.
  • Directly influence product development and engineering culture.
  • Meet the challenge of a fast-paced, startup environment.
Full Job Description
About the Role

This is a founding engineering role at a Y Combinator-backed, seed-stage AI fintech startup building an AI-native financial research platform for professional investors in the healthcare sector. You will be one of the first engineers on a three-person team, owning infrastructure, agentic systems, and the full stack end to end. Your work will directly shape how the product is built and how reliably it serves institutional investors.
What You'll Do
  • Ship across the full stack: frontend features, real-time systems, and backend infrastructure.
  • Build data pipelines and internal tools that let analysts add new sources and maintain sector coverage faster and more reliably.
  • Improve agentic parsing and extraction systems, making AI agents more capable and dependable in production.
  • Own work end to end: inspecting data, QA, instrumentation, shipping, and fixing issues in production.
  • In your first 30 days: integrate a new data source, improve system speed or reliability, build a company ontology, and ship the first version of a core product module.
What We're Looking For
  • 2 to 7 years of professional experience building, shipping, and operating production systems end to end.
  • Hands-on experience building and deploying agentic AI or LLM-based applications in production.
  • Full-stack capability: Python backend (FastAPI or equivalent), TypeScript, and React frontend.
  • Data infrastructure and pipeline development: ETL, data modeling, and SQL.
  • Database design and optimization with PostgreSQL or a similar relational database.
  • Production observability, monitoring, and debugging of distributed systems.
  • AWS cloud infrastructure and deployment experience.
  • Experience with real-time data systems and streaming updates.
  • Strong judgment about when AI agents should reason versus when deterministic logic is the right call.
  • Deep ownership mentality and comfort with ambiguity on a small, fast-moving team.
  • US citizenship required; no visa sponsorship available.
  • Bonus: capital markets, equity research, or broader financial services domain experience.
  • Bonus: familiarity with modern data tools such as dbt, columnar stores, or vector databases.
Compensation & Benefits

Base salary: $156,000 to $182,000 USD annually. No visa sponsorship available.
Location

On-site in New York City, NY, five days per week. Candidates must be local or willing to relocate.

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