Founding Engineer

Moonshots Capital; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Moonshots Capital is a stealth AI startup building the physical intelligence layer for retail. Our team includes repeat founders and senior executives from major retailers. We deploy with several U.S.

retailers and aim for enterprise scale across many stores, connecting retailers, brands and robotics systems. You will join our CTO and a small engineering team as a senior individual contributor owning systems from design through deployment.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering and system-design fundamentals.
• Experience owning architecture and production reliability.
• Current, practical understanding of AI-assisted software development.
• Ability to work directly with customers and turn incomplete requirements into working software.

Responsibilities

• Build across mobile capture, cloud infrastructure, backend services, data pipelines, APIs, and customer-facing applications.
• Productionize computer vision, machine-learning, and 3D reconstruction systems.
• Design systems that can process data reliably across tens of thousands of retail locations.
• Improve accuracy, latency, processing cost, observability, and fault tolerance.
• Translate problems observed in stores into technical requirements and production software.
• Work directly with retailer technology and operations teams on deployments and integrations.
• Use AI coding tools and agents throughout the development process.
• Make pragmatic decisions about architecture, technical debt, and when to build or integrate.
• Help hire additional engineers as the company grows.

Skills

System design

Production reliability

Customer collaboration

AI-assisted development

Architecture decisions

Mobile/Android development

Real-time data processing

Software engineering fundamentals

Tools

Android

3D reconstruction

Job description

We’re a venture-backed AI startup building the physical intelligence layer for retail.

Our team includes repeat founders who have built and sold technology companies and former senior executives from some of the world’s largest retailers and consumer brands.

Our technology is live with six major U.S. retailers, and we’re working toward an enterprise deployment across more than 20,000 stores. We’re also developing partnerships with additional retailers, brands, technology companies, and robotics organizations.

Our platform turns a short video captured on an ordinary mobile device into a living, structured model of an entire store.

From that model, we identify out-of-stocks, pricing discrepancies, planogram compliance, product locations, displays, facings, signage, promotional execution, and other store conditions. The same data powers automated store tasks and interactive 3D environments.

The platform runs on the mobile devices retailers already use, without fixed cameras or custom hardware. We are building the foundational system connecting retailers, brands, store employees, AI agents, and robotic systems.

The Role

Stealth AI Company

We’re a venture-backed AI startup building the physical intelligence layer for retail.

Our team includes repeat founders who have built and sold technology companies and former senior executives from some of the world’s largest retailers and consumer brands.

Our technology is live with six major U.S. retailers, and we’re working toward an enterprise deployment across more than 20,000 stores. We’re also developing partnerships with additional retailers, brands, technology companies, and robotics organizations.

Our platform turns a short video captured on an ordinary mobile device into a living, structured model of an entire store.

From that model, we identify out-of-stocks, pricing discrepancies, planogram compliance, product locations, displays, facings, signage, promotional execution, and other store conditions. The same data powers automated store tasks and interactive 3D environments.

The platform runs on the mobile devices retailers already use, without fixed cameras or custom hardware. We are building the foundational system connecting retailers, brands, store employees, AI agents, and robotic systems.

You will join our CTO and small engineering team as a senior individual contributor with broad technical and product ownership.

This is a hands-on role. You will write production code, make architecture decisions, work directly with customers, and own systems from initial design through deployment.

You will:

• Build across mobile capture, cloud infrastructure, backend services, data pipelines, APIs, and customer-facing applications
• Productionize computer vision, machine-learning, and 3D reconstruction systems
• Design systems that can process data reliably across tens of thousands of retail locations
• Improve accuracy, latency, processing cost, observability, and fault tolerance
• Translate problems observed in stores into technical requirements and production software
• Work directly with retailer technology and operations teams on deployments and integrations
• Use AI coding tools and agents throughout the development process
• Make pragmatic decisions about architecture, technical debt, and when to build or integrate
• Help hire additional engineers as the company grows

What We’re Looking For

We care more about what you have personally built than your title.

You may have been a technical cofounder, founding engineer, or senior technical leader at an early-stage company. You should be comfortable operating without separate product, architecture, infrastructure, and engineering organizations around you.

Strong candidates will have:

• Built and operated a production product from zero to one
• Strong software engineering and system-design fundamentals
• Technical depth in multiple areas of the stack
• Experience owning architecture and production reliability
• The ability to work directly with customers and turn incomplete requirements into working software
• Experience making technical tradeoffs under real time, cost, and resource constraints
• A current, practical understanding of AI-assisted software development
• A preference for building over managing

Particularly relevant experience includes:

• Computer vision, image processing, or 3D reconstruction
• Production machine-learning systems
• Android or mobile development
• Distributed data pipelines and real-time processing
• Enterprise SaaS, APIs, security, and integrations
• Software that interacts with physical environments
• Early-stage startup engineering

Competitive compensation, meaningful equity, and title flexibility based on experience.