Founding Engineer

David Joseph & Company; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 165,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity stake

Job summary

David Joseph & Company seeks a founding software engineer in Palo Alto to own significant parts of the product end-to-end. You will work directly with the founders and with early enterprise customers to shape the system of record for headcount planning, impacting users across HR, recruiting, and finance.

The role requires moving fast, embracing trade-offs, and delivering tangible results to real users. You will wear multiple hats across engineering, product, and customer support in a small,

Qualifications

• Two+ years building full stack software in a professional setting.
• Experience in a venture-backed startup or early-stage environment.
• Strong systems design and data modeling abilities.

Responsibilities

• Ship and iterate quickly while balancing quality.
• Collaborate with founders to design solutions for real customer problems.
• Talk directly to customers to diagnose issues in the product.

Skills

Full stack development

Startup experience

Systems design

Data modeling

Product empathy

Self-starting

Cross-functional

Adaptable to unfamiliar stack

Education

B.S. in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

GCP

MongoDB

TypeScript

Node.js

Job description

Palo Alto, CA · On-site (5 days/week) · Full-time
Compensation: $165,000 – $210,000 + 0.2% – 0.5% equity

About the Company

Our client is a seed-stage B2B software company building the system of record for headcount planning. Their platform sits between HR, recruiting and finance systems and keeps all three aligned in real time, so growing companies always know where their headcount actually stands. They are already live with more than ten enterprise customers, including several of the best-known technology companies in the US, and are backed by top-tier venture investors. The founding team previously ran engineering and product at a company they helped scale from under 50 people to roughly 900.

The Role

This is a founding engineering hire on a small core team. You would work directly with the founders and with early enterprise customers, own significant parts of the product end to end, and help push the company toward product-market fit. It suits someone who moves fast, makes sensible trade-offs, and wants their work in front of real users quickly.

What you'll be doing

• Ship and iterate quickly while staying thoughtful about quality trade-offs
• Work with the founders to design the right solution to real customer problems
• Talk directly to customers to diagnose and resolve issues in the product
• Own large parts of the product independently, from technical design through to production
• Wear multiple hats across engineering, product and customer support

Tech stack: GCP, MongoDB, TypeScript, NodeJS

Requirements

• At least two years building full stack software in a professional setting
• Experience inside a venture-backed startup, ideally as a founder or early engineer. Equivalent experience at a larger company taking projects from nothing to launch also works
• Strong systems design and data modeling ability, since the product lives or dies on how well the underlying data is structured
• Genuine feel for the product and the person using it, not just the code behind it
• A track record of self-starting, whether that is delivering something the company had not asked for or building substantial side projects of your own
• Comfortable in a very small team, moving between engineering, product and customer conversations as needed
• Able to get productive in an unfamiliar stack quickly. No specific language or framework is required
• Degree in computer science or engineering. A well-regarded programme is a plus rather than a requirement

Nice to Haves

• Time spent working alongside customers or internal teams to shape what gets built
• Background in B2B software, particularly HR or finance tooling

Why Join

• A genuine founding-engineer seat on a six-person team, with the ownership and equity that comes with it
• Enterprise customers and real usage already in place, so your work ships to people who depend on it
• Direct access to the founders and to customers, with no layers in between
• Hard, interesting problems in systems design and data modeling across a modern stack

Details

• Location · Palo Alto, CA
• Work policy · On-site, in person 5 days per week
• Compensation · $165,000 – $210,000 + 0.2% – 0.5% equity
• Visa sponsorship · Open to visa transfers, including OPT and H-1B transfers. H-1B transfers only, no new petitions
• Employment type · Full-time