Founding Engineer

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

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake for founding team (0.25–1

Job summary

Venture Up in New York is seeking a Founding Engineer to join as one of the first technical hires and help build the product, engineering culture and the company from the ground up.

You will work with a tiny founding team, own critical parts of the stack, and ship across the entire product while shaping technical decisions and culture for a fast-moving startup.

Qualifications

• 0–5 years of software engineering experience, with strong full-stack fundamentals.
• Strong TypeScript skills, with experience building and shipping production software.
• Experience with LLMs/AI agents is valuable, but exceptional engineers who want to go deep into AI are also encouraged.
• High ownership and comfortable working across unfamiliar parts of the stack rather than staying within a narrow specialism.
• Excited by early-stage startups, ambiguity and building quickly alongside founders.

Responsibilities

• Build AI Agents – Build and improve agents that automate complex scientific, regulatory and compliance workflows using LLMs and real-world data.
• Own the Full Stack – Work across agent infrastructure, backend, frontend and cloud infrastructure, tackling whatever is highest leverage for the business.
• Ship Directly to Customers – Take features from customer conversations through to production, working directly with users to understand problems and rapidly build solutions.
• Help Build the Company – Work alongside the founders as an early member of the team, helping shape engineering decisions, product direction and the culture as the company grows.

Skills

Full-stack fundamentals

TypeScript

LLMs / AI agents

High ownership

Early-stage startup experience

Job description

Founding Engineer: Build AI Agents Transforming a $2T+ Industry

Are you the sort of engineer who wants to build a company from the ground up? Do you want to join a tiny team where you work directly with the founders, ship across the entire stack, and have genuine ownership over what gets built?

A $9M-funded AI startup in New York is building AI agents for one of the world's largest and most complex industries: life sciences. Founded by former Ramp Staff Engineers, the team is just five people today and is already working with customers ranging from small teams to $30B+ enterprises.

They're looking for a Founding Engineer to join as one of their first technical hires and help build the product, engineering culture and company from the ground up.

What You'll Do:

• Build AI Agents – Build and improve agents that automate complex scientific, regulatory and compliance workflows using LLMs and real-world data.
• Own the Full Stack – Work across agent infrastructure, backend, frontend and cloud infrastructure, tackling whatever is highest leverage for the business.
• Ship Directly to Customers – Take features from customer conversations through to production, working directly with users to understand problems and rapidly build solutions.
• Help Build the Company – Work alongside the founders as an early member of the team, helping shape engineering decisions, product direction and the culture as the company grows.

What They're Looking For:

• 0–5 years of software engineering experience, with strong full-stack fundamentals.
• Strong TypeScript skills, with experience building and shipping production software.
• Experience with LLMs/AI agents is valuable, but exceptional engineers who want to go deep into AI are also encouraged.
• High ownership and comfortable working across unfamiliar parts of the stack rather than staying within a narrow specialism.
• Excited by early-stage startups, ambiguity and building quickly alongside founders.

Why Join?

• $150,000–$250,000+ base, with flexibility for exceptional candidates.
• 0.25–1% founding-team equity.
• Five days per week in their Chelsea, NYC office, working alongside a tiny founding team.
• $9M+ raised from leading investors and tech founders, with a founding team of former Ramp Staff Engineers and experience across OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, Coinbase and AWS.

This isn't a role where you'll own one small part of an established product. It's an opportunity to join at the beginning, build across the entire company, and help create AI infrastructure for an industry worth trillions.