Founding Engineer (AI Data Infrastructure Startup)

About the role

A seed‑stage AI data infrastructure startup in San Francisco is seeking a Founding Engineer to help build a people‑data and AI agent platform. This is a foundational, on‑site hire with direct collaboration with the CEO and CTO, offering real ownership and the chance to shape technical direction as the company scales toward Series A.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate core infrastructure including APIs, LLM‑powered workflows, scraping systems, and large‑scale knowledge‑graph architecture.
• Architect and maintain production‑grade systems that handle millions of API requests, emphasizing performance, cost efficiency, and reliability across cloud and Linux environments.
• Own projects end‑to‑end—from ambiguous problem definition through deployment and iteration—shipping quickly without sacrificing system integrity.
• Collaborate directly with leadership on technical decisions, roadmap priorities, and foundational architectural choices.

Required profile

• 1+ years of professional experience shipping software to production.
• Hands‑on experience with APIs, distributed systems, microservices, and data pipelines.
• Comfort working with LLMs, AI agents, and knowledge‑graph or identity‑resolution systems is a strong plus.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS or GCP) and Linux server environments.

Required skills

• APIs
• Distributed systems
• Microservices
• Data pipelines
• LLMs
• Knowledge graphs
• AWS
• GCP
• Linux

What we offer

• Salary range $150,000 – $220,000 USD annually.
• Early‑stage equity as a founding team member.
• On‑site role in San Francisco, CA (visa sponsorship not available).