Founding Engineer

a16z-speedrun; New York (NY); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founding engineer level equity

Free food in the office

Health insurance

Learning budget

Job summary

Cascade is an AI orchestration layer transforming how the physical world gets built. We analyze billions of signals to predict where major construction projects will happen next.

Our clients include architects, engineers, and builders behind infrastructure such as LaGuardia, JFK, Penn Station, nuclear reactors, data centers, and luxury hotels worldwide. We empower them to find, win, and deliver multi-million dollar projects.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Willingness to own the full stack, including direct customer interactions.
• Strong curiosity and willingness to ask questions.
• Based in New York or willing to relocate; authorized to work in the US.

Responsibilities

• Connect non-obvious signals to predictive insights for construction.
• Ship end-to-end products.
• Own features from idea to production.
• Collaborate with founders to shape product, tech, and culture.
• Talk to clients who built major skylines.
• Move fast, break things, fix them, and ship again.

Skills

LLMs experience

Full-stack ownership

Customer interaction

Curiosity

US work authorization

Job description

What we're building

Cascade is an AI orchestration layer transforming how the physical world gets built. We analyze billions of signals to predict where major construction projects will happen next.

Our clients include the architects, engineers, and builders behind iconic infrastructure such as LaGuardia, JFK, Penn Station, nuclear reactors, data centers, and Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons hotels worldwide. We empower them to find, win, and deliver their next multi-million dollar projects.

As a Founding Engineer, you will:

• Constantly seek out and make connections between non-obvious signals that could lead to new construction. For example, noticing how life events like divorces, which can trigger home sales, might eventually result in new building projects. And incorporate that in our prediction layer.




• Ship end-to-end products.




• Own features from idea to production.




• Sit next to the founders and shape the product, the tech, and the culture.




• Talk to clients who built the skyline you grew up looking at.




• Move fast. Break things. Fix them. Ship again. Broken software used by a million people beats perfect software used by no one.

Minimum requirements:

• Hands-on experience with LLMs




• Eagerness to own the full stack, including direct customer interactions.




• Strong curiosity and willingness to ask questions.




• Based in New York or willing to relocate (we work in person).




• Authorized to work in the US (we cannot sponsor visas at this time).

Bonus points if

• You've worked at an early-stage startup




• You've built something in the physical world or vertical AI (construction, civil engineering, manufacturing, energy, logistics) - or love the space




• You've started your own company, even if it didn't work out.




• You spend weekends at hackathons or shipping side projects no one asked for.




• You have a trail of cool stuff you built just because you wanted it to exist.

Benefits

• 150k-250k salary




• Founding engineer level equity




• Free food in the office




• Health insurance




• Learning budget