Alcor Labs — Full Stack Engineer

davidjoseph-co; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Alcor Labs is hiring a Full Stack Engineer in San Francisco to own the product layer around the AI core and build scalable architectures for real‑time video pipelines and wearables. The role emphasizes front‑to‑back ownership, latency‑sensitive backend services, and cross‑stack collaboration with rapid iteration in a startup environment.

You will ship an end‑to‑end experience for customers using smart glasses, including mobile/desktop clients and deployment workflows.

Qualifications

• 2-5 years post‑grad SWE experience, ideally early‑stage startup exposure.
• Founding engineer (#1‑5) OR early startup experience that shipped
• Strong background in real‑time video/streaming pipelines and low-latency systems
• Shipped AI pipelines into a product (LLM/agent integration) is strongly preferred

Responsibilities

• Ship the end‑to‑end product experience: smart glasses backend companion app that real customers can use without an engineer present.
• Build and optimize the real‑time video/streaming pipeline connecting glasses to the AI core within tight latency budgets.
• Own the backend APIs and data layer the glasses and AI services depend on — reliable, observable, and scalable to early customer load.
• Build the mobile/desktop client for setup, monitoring, and workflow configuration.
• Stand up the deployment and release path so new builds reach hardware in the field safely.
• Define product architecture and engineering practices as the team scales, making smart, scalable decisions early that won't need reworking.
• Be the cross‑stack generalist who unblocks the team: debug from frontend through backend to device.

Skills

Full-stack development

Real-time video/streaming

System architecture

Frontend/Mobile development

Education

Strong CS/Eng background or equivalent shipping record

Tools

AWS

Supabase

Railway

GCP

WebRTC

Job description

Alcor Labs — Full Stack Engineer

Type: Full-time

Work arrangement: On‑site 5 days per week in San Francisco (hacker house ideal)

Location: San Francisco, CA

Compensation: $180K–$240K base + 0.25–0.75% equity

Hiring count: 1

Visa sponsorship: O‑1, TN, E‑3, H‑1B1, H‑1B transfers, and H‑1B change‑of‑status for candidates already in the US. No petitions from abroad. F‑1 OPT/STEM OPT fine.

Reports to: Elior Benarous, Co‑founder

About Alcor Labs

Alcor Labs builds wearable AI co‑pilots for industrial field workers, deploying smart glasses powered by agentic vision‑language models (VLMs) into legacy industries like data centers, energy grids, and aerospace. The product grounds computer vision and agentic VLMs on bespoke integrations with legacy enterprise systems (Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP) rather than being another LLM wrapper. Founded by two French co‑founders (best friends since age three) with mechanical engineering and AI computer‑vision research backgrounds.

Founded: 2026 | Team size: 2 | Total funding: $5M | Industry: AI, Hardware, Robotics, Enterprise, Defense, B2B, Manufacturing | Website: www.alcor‑labs.com | Office: San Francisco, CA

Why Candidates Should Join

• Real impact: Agentic VLM smart glasses already deployed at world‑leading data center and energy grid customers. Two anchor accounts alone are on path to $10M ARR, with 10‑15 more enterprise prospects in pipeline (hyperscalers, top aerospace primes, US Army).
• Differentiated bet: Computer vision and agentic VLM grounded on bespoke integrations with legacy enterprise systems (Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP). Not another LLM wrapper.
• Strong seed and investors: $5M led by A* with a deep operator network, and Valor as strategic with direct xAI / data center introductions. Founder‑led sales already converting.
• Architecture ownership from day one: Define how the product layer scales as customer fleets ramp into the thousands of technicians. Video on wearables is one of the harder versions of full‑stack right now (real‑time video pipelines, low‑latency streaming, mobile + desktop + backend, edge integrations).

Intake Call Summary

• Full Stack Engineer role focuses on scalable system design, apps and platforms optimized for latency; more backend‑focused early on with potential for future frontend work.
• Sits alongside two other roles the founders are hiring for (Founding Engineer and AI Engineer); backend‑only specialists route to Founding Engineer.
• Ideal Full Stack profile: scalable system design skills, ideally video‑heavy experience.
• Comp for Full Stack: $180K–$240K base, 0.25‑0.75% equity.
• Work arrangement: on‑site role, intense expected hours (founders referenced roughly 70‑80 hours/week), with some flexibility for remote on a sixth day.
• Interview process: 15‑minute intro call, 45‑minute work‑experience deep dive, live coding round, then on‑site.
• Inconsistency flag: the auto‑generated intake transcript refers to the company as "Aqua Labs," while the role page, company section, and website all say "Alcor Labs." Treating Alcor Labs as authoritative.

The Role

A full‑stack engineer with 2‑5 years of experience who can make scalable architectural decisions and own the product layer around the AI core, comfortable building real‑time video pipelines, backend APIs, and mobile/desktop clients for industrial‑facing wearable AI products.

What You'll Be Doing

• Ship the end‑to‑end product experience: smart glasses backend companion app that real customers can use without an engineer present.
• Build and optimize the real‑time video/streaming pipeline connecting glasses to the AI core within tight latency budgets.
• Own the backend APIs and data layer the glasses and AI services depend on — reliable, observable, and scalable to early customer load.
• Build the mobile/desktop client for setup, monitoring, and workflow configuration.
• Stand up the deployment and release path so new builds reach hardware in the field safely.
• Define product architecture and engineering practices as the team scales, making smart, scalable decisions early that won't need reworking.
• Be the cross‑stack generalist who unblocks the team: debug from frontend through backend to device.

Tech stack: TypeScript, Python, React, React Native, Node.js, AWS, GCP, Supabase, Railway, WebRTC, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, real‑time streaming, REST APIs, CI/CD

Qualifications

Seniority

• 2-5 years of post‑grad SWE experience, ideally early‑stage startup exposure. [Required]

Work Experience

• Built and shipped scalable systems zero‑to‑one with real user traction, owning the whole app end‑to‑end (backend + APIs + data layer AND the frontend/mobile client a real user touches). Backend‑only specialists route to Founding Engineer. [Must have]
• Founding engineer (#1‑5) OR early startup experience that shipped OR intense‑culture company (Tesla, SpaceX, Anduril, top YC). [Required]
• Big‑company tenure (Meta Reality Labs, Snap, Apple Vision, Google, big streaming infra) is a bonus only when on a directly relevant team (AR/smart‑glasses, real‑time video/streaming, on‑device/edge ML) OR paired with a builder signal (founder / early‑startup / side projects / OSS). A long single big‑tech tenure with no builder signal and no relevant‑team work is a negative. [Required]
• Real‑time video, streaming, or low‑latency pipeline experience (YouTube, Twitch, Cloudflare, Mux). [Strongly preferred]
• Shipped AI pipelines into a product (LLM/agent integration). [Strongly preferred]

Education

• Strong CS/Eng background OR demonstrated equivalent shipping record. [Required]
• Grit proxies: olympiad medals, USACO Platinum, competitive programming rank, or founded‑while‑studying. [Strongly preferred]

Hard Skills

• Full‑stack ability on a modern startup stack (AWS, Supabase, Railway, GCP, etc.). [Must have]
• Frontend / design / UX craft. [Strongly preferred]
• Experience shipping mobile applications (iOS, Android, or strong React Native with native bridges). [Strongly preferred]

Soft Skills

• Makes mature, scalable architectural decisions independently. [Required]

Miscellaneous

• Hacker house (live on site) ideal; minimum on‑site 5 days/week in SF. [Must have]

Traits to Avoid

• Legacy/enterprise‑only background (Oracle, Infosys, banks).
• Specialist in only one stack layer; no full‑stack range.
• Big‑tech‑only profile with no shipping ownership or side projects.

Role Details

Salary $180K–$240K

Equity 0.25-0.75%

On‑site policy On‑site 5 days per week in San Francisco (hacker house / live on site ideal)

Visa sponsorship O‑1, TN, E‑3, H‑1B1, H‑1B transfers, and H‑1B change‑of‑status for candidates already in the US. No petitions processed from abroad. F‑1 OPT/STEM OPT fine.

Employment type Full‑time

Location San Francisco, CA