Founding Engineer

Empathic; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Extremely generous equity ownership

Generous medical/dental/vision

Free lunch and dinner every day

Monthly bonus

401k plus match

Work equipment provided

Job summary

Empathic in San Francisco is seeking a founding engineer to join as employee #1, with substantial equity and a strong technical taste. You will work directly with a Thiel Fellow founder to shape real‑time human‑AI interactions.

The role emphasizes building scalable backend and frontend systems, operating early in a startup, and contributing to a fast‑growing product from scratch. This is an in‑person, in‑city opportunity with significant ownership potential.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience with 1+ year senior responsibilities.
• Proficiency in one or more backend languages and distributed systems concepts.
• Built apps full stack with strong code quality and craft.
• Frontend proficiency and good design taste a plus.

Responsibilities

• Shape the next generation of human‑AI interaction with the founder and team.
• Build new systems for memory, retrieval, proactivity and responsiveness.
• Integrate real‑time video generation and audio synthesis models.
• Develop user facing interfaces and features.
• Set engineering quality bar and help recruit top talent.
• Report directly to the founder.

Skills

Backend languages

Distributed systems

Databases

Full stack

Frontend skills

Design taste

Startup experience

Engineering leadership

Job description

tl;dr: This is a 1 of 1 role. We're looking for a founding engineer to work alongside a Thiel Fellow founder as employee #1 - with 5X more equity than most "founding engineers".

About Empathic

“…but I tell you all today, I would rather die a man than live for all eternity a machine.”

-Bicentennial Man (Asimov, 1976)

The world is trending towards fewer, shallower friendships, meaning more lonely people and less social contact than ever before. Empathic is creating a great friend for everyone on Earth, by digitizing connection, in what we think could be the biggest cultural transition of our lifetime.

Most AI “conversation” today is a robotic, sterile, turn‑based interface. We’re building towards a realistic real‑time video call medium where AI can be present and proactive, to connect with users. Users will connect not on a new destination, but the iMessage, Facetime, and other native apps they already love.

We've raised $2.7M led by BoxGroup and the founder is a Thiel Fellow, YC alum, Stanford dropout who recently sold his last company. We intend to build an engineering‑first organization of the highest quality, fully in‑person in San Francisco. Think a room full of only the smartest people you've met, doing the best work of your life.

Who you are

• 3+ years experience, excluding internships, with 1+ year senior responsibilities
• You use AI gen to move faster in all aspects of development, but you developed deep technical taste before, with strong opinions on systems, code quality, and the craft of software development.
• Proficiency in one or more backend languages (e.g., Python, Go, Rust, Typescript or similar) and distributed systems concepts, work with databases, etc. You've built apps full stack.
• Frontend proficiency and design taste is a massive plus.
• You are excited about working at the earliest stage! Former founder, or early engineer at a startup who has built a product from scratch is a plus
• Proven ability to thrive in fast‑growing, product‑driven companies by effectively navigating loosely defined tasks and managing competing priorities.

What you’ll do

• Shape the next generation of human‑AI interaction with our founder, design, and other engineers.
• Build new systems for memory, retrieval, proactivity, responsiveness, and more
• Work on and integrate the latest internal and external real‑time video generation and audio synthesis models
• Build user facing interfaces and features
• Create the bar for engineering quality and help recruit world‑class talent.
• Report directly to the founder: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike21/

Interview process

Our interview process is simple, and we can go start to finish in less than one week at fastest:

• 20‑minute screening call
• 2 technical interviews
• Onsite
• Offer

We always perform reference checks.

Benefits

• Extremely generous equity ownership
• Generous medical/dental/vision, covering most Gold and Platinum plans (via employer ICHRA)
• Free lunch and dinner every day
• Monthly bonus if you live or move close to the office
• 401k plus match
• Obvious things (work computer, things you need to get things done)