Founding Engineer

JACK; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity 1–2%

Hybrid work in SF

Job summary

JACK is hiring its first engineer as a Founding Engineer / Engineering Lead to own everything technical from day one. You’ll ship v1, then hire and lead the team, with full autonomy over architecture, stack and tooling. This is a true co-founder seat with meaningful equity.

Responsibilities include building AI agents to navigate government portals, designing secure infrastructure for credentials, and guiding critical tech decisions while growing the engineering team.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience as a strong, hands-on IC.
• Experience shipping LLM-powered products to production.
• Track record of building secure systems that handle sensitive data.
• Startup or founding engineer experience taking products from zero to one.
• Eager to learn new technologies and grow into leading a team.

Responsibilities

• Build AI agents that reliably navigate government portals end to end, handling logins, MFA, session management and fragile workflows
• Ship the first product into users' hands, turning months of research into working software
• Design the trust and security infrastructure for handling government credentials, SSNs and payment methods
• Make the critical technical calls: stack, tooling, architecture and build vs. buy
• Hire and lead engineers #2 through #5

Skills

Software engineering

LLM deployment

Security engineering

Startup founding experience

Team leadership

Job description

We're a well-capitalized, stealth-stage startup building AI agents that navigate government systems on behalf of everyday Americans. Every year, roughly $140B in federal benefits goes unclaimed. Our mission is to help every adult in America claim what they're owed without fighting through confusing portals and paperwork. The founding team has built and scaled companies before, including through an IPO.

The role

We're hiring our first engineer: a Founding Engineer / Engineering Lead who owns everything technical from day one. You'll ship v1 yourself, then hire and lead the team as we grow. The founders aren't engineers, so you'll have full autonomy over architecture, stack and tooling. This is a true technical co-founder seat with meaningful equity.

What you'll do

• Build AI agents that reliably navigate real government portals end to end, handling logins, MFA, session management and fragile workflows
• Ship the first product into users' hands, turning months of research into working software
• Design the trust and security infrastructure for handling government credentials, SSNs and payment methods
• Make the critical technical calls: stack, tooling, architecture and build vs. buy
• Hire and lead engineers #2 through #5

What we're looking for

• 5+ years of software engineering experience as a strong, hands-on IC
• Experience shipping LLM-powered products to production
• A track record of building secure systems that handle sensitive data
• Startup or founding engineer experience taking products from zero to one
• Eager to learn new technologies and excited to grow into leading a team
• Nice to have: experience in high-stakes spaces like fintech, healthcare or govtech

Compensation and logistics

• $180K to $250K base salary plus 1% to 2% equity
• Hybrid: 3 to 4 days a week in our San Francisco office
• Full-time
• Must be authorized to work in the US without sponsorship (US citizen or green card holder)