Founding Engineer

Clera

$150K — $250K *
Information Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 3+ years in software engineering with experience in production systems
  • Demonstrated ability to build from zero to one, ideal for startup or ambitious side project experience
  • Proficiency in TypeScript and React for frontend development
  • Proficient in Node.js for backend development
  • Hands-on experience with large language models and agent-based platforms

Responsibilities

  • Own core systems, including agent platform and infrastructure
  • Establish engineering patterns for future hires
  • Collaborate closely with founders, influencing technical direction
  • Ship production-ready software on a daily basis
  • Ensure systems are reliable, observable, and well-instrumented

Benefits

  • Visa sponsorship available
  • On-site collaboration in San Francisco
  • Opportunity to shape engineering culture and practices
  • High ownership and impact in a fast-paced startup environment
Full Job Description
About the Role

We're a seed-stage startup building an agentic integration platform used by paying enterprise customers. We're looking for our first engineering hire - someone who will own core systems end-to-end, set the engineering patterns that every future hire builds on, and work shoulder-to-shoulder with the founders to ship production-ready software every day.

This is a high-ownership, high-impact role for an engineer who thrives in ambiguity, loves building from zero to one, and wants their technical fingerprints on the entire stack.
What You'll Do
  • Own core systems end-to-end: agent platform, infrastructure, and the integrations runtime.
  • Define and establish the engineering patterns and standards that every future hire will build upon.
  • Work directly with the founders - your opinions and technical leadership matter as much as your code.
  • Ship to production constantly, delivering reliable, observable, and well-instrumented systems.
What We're Looking For

Must-haves (dealbreakers):
  • 3+ years of software engineering experience building and shipping production systems.
  • Proven ability to build something 0 to 1 - in an early-stage startup or through serious side projects.
  • Proficiency in TypeScript and React for frontend development.
  • Proficiency in Node.js for backend development.
  • Hands-on experience integrating or building workflows around large language models (LLMs) and agent-based platforms.

Required skills:
  • Experience with AWS for cloud infrastructure.
  • Experience with PostgreSQL for data storage and database design.
  • Experience owning end-to-end feature development across frontend, backend, and infrastructure with measurable customer impact.
  • Experience implementing observability, monitoring, and distributed tracing in production systems.
  • Experience building reliable retry and queuing patterns in distributed systems.

Nice to have:
  • Experience working in fast-paced startup environments.
  • Experience setting engineering patterns and standards for growing teams.
Compensation & Benefits
  • Salary: $150,000 - $250,000 USD annually, depending on experience.
  • Visa sponsorship is available.
Location
  • On-site in San Francisco, CA.
  • This is not a remote role.

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