Founding Engineer

Recruiting From Scratch; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Visa transfer support

Relocation support

Job summary

Recruiting From Scratch is seeking a Founding Engineer in Brooklyn, NY (Hybrid). You will own the AI stack powering freight brokerage workflows and build AI agents for production use. This is a true founding role with ownership over architecture, infra, and customer-facing AI products.

You will work closely with founders, product leadership, and freight brokers, shipping end-to-end AI-driven workflows from concept to production in a fast-paced startup environment.

Qualifications

• Must have 5+ years of professional full-stack software engineering experience.
• Experience in early-stage startups or founding engineer roles preferred.
• Experience shipping AI/LLM-powered products in production.

Responsibilities

• Own AI stack powering freight brokerage workflows.
• Build AI agents and agentic workflows for production use.
• Develop carrier sales automation systems.
• Build AI-powered quoting and workflow automation systems.
• Create email triage and routing workflows using LLMs.
• Establish deployment infrastructure, tooling, CI/CD, and engineering practices.
• Move prototypes to production with customer feedback loops.
• Collaborate with founders and product leadership to decide what to build.

Skills

Full-stack engineering

AI/LLM development

Agentic workflows

Production apps with LLMs

APIs & backend services

DevOps & CI/CD

Fraud prevention

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Equivalent practical engineering experience

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud infrastructure

LLM APIs integration

Job description

Founding Engineer

Location - Brooklyn, NY (Hybrid) - Hybrid role requiring four days per week in-office in Brooklyn, NY.

Compensation - $180,000 -- $250,000 Base + 0.4% -- 0.8% Equity

Visa - Open to Visa Transfers (OPT, H1B Transfers)

Company Stage - Early Stage -- Seed

Industry - Artificial Intelligence, Logistics, Freight Technology, Supply Chain, SaaS, Agentic AI

About the Company

Our client is building AI-native software for freight brokers, helping independent freight agencies reduce operational workload and scale their businesses more efficiently.

The company is targeting the large and underserved freight brokerage market, where independent operators manage significant books of business using fragmented and outdated software systems.

The company is backed by experienced operators who have previously built and scaled successful businesses and is operating as a small, highly technical early-stage team.

As a Founding Engineer, you'll have significant ownership over the company's technical foundation and AI stack, working directly with leadership and customers to build products that automate critical freight brokerage workflows.

This is an opportunity to join a true founding engineering team where you'll work across AI agents, full-stack product development, infrastructure, fraud prevention, and customer-facing workflows.

What You'll Do

• Own the AI stack powering freight brokerage workflows
• Build AI agents and agentic workflows for production use
• Develop carrier sales automation systems
• Build AI-powered quoting and workflow automation systems
• Build email triage, routing, and automation workflows using LLMs
• Design and implement production AI integrations using modern LLM technologies
• Set the technical foundation for the engineering organization from the ground up
• Make architecture decisions across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI systems
• Establish deployment infrastructure, tooling, CI/CD, and engineering practices
• Build fraud prevention systems to detect and mitigate load theft across multiple fraud vectors
• Develop rules-based and AI-assisted fraud detection workflows
• Build and ship full-stack products end-to-end
• Work closely with freight brokers to understand their workflows and operational challenges
• Join customer calls and observe users directly to identify product opportunities
• Translate customer problems into technical solutions and shipped software
• Partner closely with product leadership to determine what to build, buy, or integrate
• Own projects from initial concept through production deployment and operation
• Build reliable APIs, backend services, frontend experiences, and AI workflows
• Move quickly from prototypes to production with tight customer feedback loops
• Operate with high ownership and autonomy in a small startup environment
• Help establish engineering culture, technical standards, and development processes
• Contribute to product direction and broader business decisions
• Work across the stack as priorities evolve
• Continuously improve the reliability, quality, and performance of production systems

Ideal Candidate Background

Experience Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience in full-stack software engineering
• Strong experience working at early-stage startups
• Experience as a founding engineer or early engineering team member preferred
• Experience building and shipping products end-to-end
• Experience building AI/LLM-powered products in production
• Experience developing agentic workflows or AI-powered automation
• Experience owning technical architecture decisions on small teams
• Experience operating production software with real users
• Experience working in highly ambiguous startup environments
• Experience collaborating closely with product and business leadership
• Strong ownership mentality with demonstrated execution ability
• Comfortable taking products from concept through deployment and iteration
• Experience working directly with customers or end users preferred
• Logistics, supply chain, or freight industry experience is a strong plus
• Comfortable working across frontend, backend, infrastructure, and AI systems

Technical Requirements

• Strong full-stack engineering experience
• Strong backend and frontend development skills
• Experience building production applications using LLMs
• Experience with AI agents and agentic workflows
• Experience integrating LLM APIs into customer-facing products
• Strong understanding of AI application architecture
• Experience with APIs and backend services
• Experience with deployment and cloud infrastructure
• Experience setting up CI/CD pipelines and engineering tooling
• Experience with DevOps and production infrastructure
• Experience building fraud detection or rules-based prevention systems preferred
• Strong software architecture and systems thinking
• Strong debugging and production troubleshooting capabilities
• Ability to work with a technology stack that is not rigidly prescribed
• Ability to learn and adopt new technologies quickly
• Strong understanding of production reliability and scalability

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field preferred
• Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted
• Strong software engineering and systems fundamentals

Soft Skills

• Exceptional technical ownership
• Strong analytical and problem-solving ability
• Deep curiosity around AI and emerging technologies
• Strong product mindset
• Comfortable working with significant ambiguity
• Strong communication skills
• Comfortable collaborating directly with founders and product leadership
• Comfortable working directly with customers and end users
• High execution velocity
• Strong bias toward shipping
• Strong ability to reason from first principles
• Comfortable making technical decisions independently
• Low-ego collaborative mentality
• Strong builder mentality
• Comfortable wearing multiple hats on a small team
• Strong business and customer orientation
• Comfortable operating in a high-intensity startup environment
• Strong willingness to work in-person four days per week in Brooklyn

Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $180,000 -- $250,000
• Equity: 0.4% -- 0.8%
• Opportunity to join a true founding engineering team
• Significant ownership over the company's AI stack
• Opportunity to shape architecture and engineering culture from the ground up
• Direct collaboration with founders and product leadership
• Opportunity to build production AI agents and automation systems
• Exposure to logistics, freight, supply chain, and AI technology
• Opportunity to work directly with customers and end users
• High-impact early-stage environment with rapid iteration
• Opportunity to influence both product and technical strategy
• Visa transfer support and potential relocation support

Why Join

This is an opportunity to join an early-stage company tackling a massive and underserved logistics market through AI-native software.

You'll operate as a true founding engineer, owning major parts of the technical stack while building AI agents, automation workflows, fraud prevention systems, and customer-facing products from the ground up.

You'll work directly with founders, product leadership, and freight brokers, creating extremely tight feedback loops between customer problems and shipped software.

If you enjoy building products from scratch, working across the full stack, applying LLMs and agentic AI to real-world workflows, and operating with exceptional ownership in an early-stage startup, this role offers significant technical and product impact.