Founding Engineer

kadence; New York (NY); On-site; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Kadence, an early-stage startup building an interface for enterprise decision-making, seeks a Founding Engineer to turn the MVP into a scalable platform and shape the technical foundation.

You will own both the customer-facing product and the platform, spanning full-stack development, data infrastructure, cloud deployment and AI model operations, while collaborating with founders and researchers to deliver a polished product.

Qualifications

• 5-8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Experience shipping a data-heavy B2B or enterprise product from early stage through production.
• Strong TypeScript, React, Next.js and PostgreSQL experience.
• Hands-on Python for data processing, including pandas, SQL or DuckDB.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve the customer-facing application, from data model to user interface.
• Own the cloud platform, including infrastructure as code, deployments, CI/CD, observability and security.
• Design a scalable, multi-tenant architecture and onboarding process.
• Transform complex customer data into model-ready datasets and maintain data pipelines for the product.
• Deploy, monitor and retrain ML models with the research team.
• Establish standards for architecture, testing, code review and production reliability.
• Work with founders, researchers and customers to prioritize features and gather feedback.
• Use AI-assisted development tools while maintaining code quality.

Skills

TypeScript

React

Next.js

PostgreSQL

Python

Data pipelines

CI/CD

Azure

AI/ML in prod

Product judgment

Tools

Pandas

SQL

DuckDB

Job description

We are partnering with an early-stage, well-funded startup building the interface for the next generation of enterprise decision-making, powered by behavioral simulations and LLMs.

The company is working with its first enterprise customers and is hiring a Founding Engineer to turn its initial product into a scalable, production-ready platform. You will join a small founding team, work directly with experienced founders and researchers, and help shape the company’s technical foundation.

The role

You will own both the customer-facing product and the platform behind it, bringing the MVP into production and building the architecture needed to support additional enterprise customers.

This is a hands-on role spanning full-stack product development, data infrastructure, cloud deployment and AI model operations. You should be comfortable making technical decisions independently, working directly with customers and turning ambiguous requirements into a polished product.

What you’ll own

• Build and evolve the customer-facing application, from data model to user interface
• Own the cloud platform, including infrastructure as code, deployments, CI/CD, observability and security
• Design a scalable, multi-tenant architecture and efficient customer onboarding process
• Transform complex customer data into reliable, model-ready datasets
• Build and maintain the data pipelines and analytical systems supporting the product
• Deploy, monitor and retrain machine learning models with the research team
• Establish strong standards for architecture, testing, code review and production reliability
• Work with founders, researchers and customers to prioritize features and bring feedback into the product
• Use AI-assisted development tools while maintaining full accountability for code quality

What we’re looking for

• 5-8+ years of software engineering experience
• Experience shipping a data-heavy B2B or enterprise product from an early stage through production
• Strong TypeScript, React, Next.js and PostgreSQL experience
• Hands-on Python experience for data processing, ideally including pandas, SQL or DuckDB
• Experience building data pipelines and transforming messy customer data into dependable datasets
• Experience with infrastructure as code and cloud platforms; Azure is preferred
• Familiarity with CI/CD, observability, application security and production operations
• Experience deploying or supporting AI and machine learning models in production
• Strong product judgment and the ability to build an intuitive, polished interface
• Confidence working directly with enterprise customers and communicating technical concepts clearly

You may be particularly well suited if you have

• Worked as a Founding Engineer, early engineer, technical lead or senior product engineer at an early-stage startup
• Built enterprise AI, analytics, workflow or decision-support products
• Owned a product across frontend, backend, data and infrastructure
• Turned customer-specific implementations into reusable platform capabilities
• Operated effectively within a small team with significant autonomy