Founding Engineer

Clera

$140K — $220K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-7 years of full-stack development experience with TypeScript, Next.js, and Python.
  • Proven experience creating production-ready AI agents and evaluation frameworks.
  • Hands-on experience with application deployment on Google Cloud Platform.
  • Experience integrating with legacy systems and enterprise software.
  • Demonstrated ability to handle features from requirements to testing and deployment.
  • Proficiency in conducting customer discovery and translating needs into tech solutions.
  • Experience building automated testing and observability tools.

Responsibilities

  • Take complete ownership of projects from customer interaction to delivering solutions.
  • Develop features across the entire stack including AI agents and cloud infrastructure.
  • Enhance customer implementation processes to improve speed and reliability.
  • Ship your first customer-ready feature in the initial week.
  • Engage with customers in your first month to identify and solve problems efficiently.
  • Own significant product areas and make impactful contributions within the first quarter.

Benefits

  • Early equity in a high-growth startup with existing revenue.
  • Visa sponsorship options available.
  • Collaborative in-person work environment in San Francisco.
Full Job Description
About the Role

This is a Founding Engineer role at a small but fast-moving enterprise AI startup building configurable automation products for distributors and manufacturers. The company's platform automates critical back-office and sales operations workflows - including quoting, order entry, and process execution - and integrates directly with customers' existing ERP and CRM systems.

The product is already live with customers doing significant revenue, and demand is growing fast. As the first engineering hire, you'll work closely with the founders, own problems end to end, and have outsized influence on what gets built and how. Visa sponsorship is available.
What You'll Do
  • Own problems completely - from talking with customers and mapping their workflows, to designing and shipping the solution.
  • Build across the full stack: customer-facing features, AI agents, third-party integrations, and cloud infrastructure.
  • Improve the evals, tests, and tooling that make each new customer implementation faster and more reliable.
  • Week one: Ship your first feature to a live customer.
  • Month one: Get on a customer call, identify a problem, design it, and deploy the fix.
  • Quarter one: Own a meaningful surface area of the product end to end.
What We're Looking For

Must-haves:
  • Full-stack development experience shipping production web applications with TypeScript, Next.js, and Python.
  • Demonstrated experience building production-ready AI agents: context engineering, tool design, and evaluation frameworks.
  • Hands-on experience deploying and managing applications on Google Cloud Platform.
  • Experience integrating with legacy systems, third-party APIs, and enterprise software platforms.
  • Track record of owning features end to end - from customer requirements through design, implementation, testing, and deployment.
  • Experience conducting customer discovery and translating real business problems into technical solutions.
  • Experience building automated testing, evaluation frameworks, and observability tooling for production systems.
  • Comfort thriving in early-stage startup environments with small teams and rapid iteration.

Nice-to-haves:
  • Experience with LLM frameworks, prompt engineering, or AI agent orchestration tools.
  • Familiarity with ERP systems, manufacturing workflows, or B2B operations automation.
  • Experience building integrations with enterprise software or data systems.

You're a great fit if you:
  • Prefer owning whole problems over working from a narrowly defined backlog.
  • Enjoy talking directly with customers and getting to the root of their needs.
  • Ship fast without sacrificing quality.
  • Stay on the bleeding edge of AI tooling while exercising your own engineering judgment.
Compensation & Benefits
  • Salary: $140,000 - $220,000 USD annually
  • Early equity in a high-growth, revenue-generating startup
  • Visa sponsorship available
Location

This role is on-site in San Francisco, CA. The team works closely together in person - remote or hybrid arrangements are not available for this position.

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