Founding Engineer

Clera

$120K — $250K *
Consumer Technology
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 3-10+ years of software engineering experience, primarily backend with full-stack capabilities.
  • Strong proficiency in Go, emphasizing clean and maintainable code.
  • Experience in building and deploying AI-driven or agentic systems in production environments.
  • Familiarity with agent architectures, context engineering, and AI tool integrations.
  • Experience with production readiness including monitoring and performance tuning.
  • Strong product sense, prioritizing user outcomes in development.
  • Ability to work with minimal guidance, managing ambiguity effectively.
  • Experience launching projects from inception, including startups or greenfield features.

Responsibilities

  • Own product features from user insights to production deployment.
  • Design and enhance agentic systems for higher accuracy and reliability.
  • Engage with cutting-edge AI engineering practices and architectures.
  • Interface directly with users to identify pain points and co-create solutions.
  • Develop full-stack applications using Go for backend and Vite/TypeScript for frontend.
  • Promote AI-first development practices and improve developer tools.
  • Conduct code reviews efficiently while upholding high engineering standards.

Benefits

  • Generous equity aligned with a founding-level role.
Full Job Description
About the Role

This is a founding engineering role at a YC-backed enterprise AI startup building an agentic operating system that lets businesses deploy and orchestrate AI agents at scale. You'll operate at near-CTO level - owning large surface areas of the product, shaping architecture, and working directly with users to solve real problems. The impact here is outsized and the role is integral to how the company grows.
What You'll Do
  • Own product features end-to-end, from user insight through scoping, building, and shipping to production.
  • Design, build, and improve agentic systems - increasing their accuracy, reliability, and power.
  • Work at the frontier of AI engineering: context engineering, tool use, and multi-agent architectures.
  • Talk directly to users, deeply understand their pain points, and scope features that solve real problems.
  • Build full-stack when needed across a Go backend and Vite/TypeScript frontend.
  • Champion AI-first development practices - coding agents, automation, and developer productivity tooling.
  • Review code quickly and maintain high engineering standards across the codebase.
What We're Looking For
  • 3-10+ years of software engineering experience, backend-heavy with full-stack versatility.
  • Strong proficiency in Go; clean, maintainable code is a point of pride for you.
  • Hands-on experience building and deploying AI-driven or agentic systems in production environments.
  • Familiarity with agent architectures, context engineering, tool use, and multi-model AI integrations.
  • Experience ensuring production readiness: monitoring, observability, performance tuning, and reliability.
  • Deep product sense - you build for user outcomes, not for the sake of code.
  • Comfort with ambiguity; you scope and execute without waiting for detailed specs.
  • Experience shipping something from scratch - a startup, a side project, or a greenfield feature.
  • Active user of modern AI coding tools (e.g. AI-assisted coding environments, coding agents).
  • US work authorization required; visa sponsorship is not available.
Compensation & Benefits
  • Salary: $120,000 - $250,000 USD annually
  • Generous equity commensurate with a founding-level role
  • Visa sponsorship: not available
Location

On-site in San Francisco, California, USA.

Similar Jobs

More Jobs at Clera

More Consumer Technology Jobs

Find similar Founding Engineer jobs: