Founding Engineer

ABOUT THE ROLE You'll be the second engineering hire at an early-stage B2B SaaS startup building AI agents for the industrial ingredient manufacturing industry, a sector worth hundreds of billions of dollars that underpins the global food supply. Working directly alongside the founding team, you'll have broad ownership across the full stack and a direct hand in every major product decision the company makes. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Build backend systems that ingest and process messy real-world documents from customer ERPs and inboxes, including large-scale PDF pipelines. - Develop LLM-powered agents that complete complex, multi-page compliance and food safety documents end to end. - Own features across the entire stack, from backend services through to the UI, picking up whatever the company needs next. - Ship fast and iterate directly on real user feedback rather than prolonged architecture debate. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - A track record of shipping products or major features that real users actively used, with the ability to articulate tradeoffs and lessons learned. - Full-stack range: comfortable taking a feature from backend service through to the UI without waiting for a specialist. - Production experience with LLM-powered features or agents (not just prototypes or demos), ideally integrating multiple model providers. - Strong backend engineering skills: services that ingest and process unstructured real-world data, plus solid relational schema design (Postgres or equivalent). - Experience with or ability to ramp quickly on Kotlin and Spring Boot, React and Next.js, and cloud infrastructure (GCP, AWS, or Azure). - Document processing, PDF parsing, or unstructured data extraction experience is a strong plus. - Early-stage startup or founding engineer experience, or a demonstrated appetite for the ambiguity and ownership that comes with it. - Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco, this role is fully on-site five days a week. - No degree or years-of-experience requirement; what you have built and how you think matters most. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS Base salary: $200,000 to $300,000 annually. Equity: 0.5% to 2%. Visa sponsorship is not available. LOCATION On-site, five days a week in San Francisco, California, United States.