Founding Engineer

Alexander Chapman; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Alexander Chapman in NYC seeks a founding member of technical staff to build core AI-enabled infrastructure for critical utilities. You will own architecture, backend, and data workflows, collaborating closely with founders to deploy solutions used in the real world within weeks.

You are a strong technologist and builder who can move between problems, debugging in production and delivering end-to-end systems from idea to deployment.

Qualifications

• Strong technical background in software/AI applicable to core infra
• Ability to own end-to-end ownership in a 0-1 startup context
• Experience debugging and shipping in production environments

Responsibilities

• Build core technology from ground up for critical infrastructure AI
• Own architecture, product and engineering culture in early-stage team
• Ship production-grade AI workflows and integrations for engineers

Skills

Backend engineering

AI systems

Distributed infra

Job description

Founding Member of Technical Staff | AI x Critical Infrastructure | NYC

I’m working with an extremely ambitious, well-funded AI startup in NYC that’s building technology to completely change how critical infrastructure is designed across the US.

They’re applying AI to an enormous industry that has barely been touched by modern technology — working directly with the engineers responsible for water systems, power utilities, transportation, bridges and other critical infrastructure.

They’re now looking for a Founding Member of Technical Staff to join at a very early stage and work directly with the founders and CTO.

This is a true 0-1 engineering role with a huge amount of ownership. You’ll be building the core technology that turns decades of engineering drawings, specifications, reports, calculations and project data into systems that engineers can actually use.

You could be working across:

• LLM pipelines, agents and RAG
• Document intelligence and parsing complex engineering files
• Data connectors and knowledge systems
• Backend and infrastructure
• Building new AI-powered workflows from scratch
• Taking products all the way from an idea to deployment and real-world usage

What makes this particularly interesting is how close you are to the actual problem. You’ll work alongside practicing engineers, understand how they work today, build against those problems, and see what you ship being used in the real world within weeks.

They’re looking for someone who is very strong technically but also a builder at heart — someone comfortable jumping between problems, moving quickly, debugging in production and owning things end-to-end rather than staying within a narrow area.

You’ll have the opportunity to:

• Work directly with the founders and CTO
• Build core technology from the ground up
• Have real influence over architecture, product and engineering culture
• Apply frontier AI to a massive, underserved industry
• Join early enough to receive meaningful founding-level equity

If you’re a strong software / backend / AI engineer who wants serious ownership and the chance to build something from zero.