Founding Engineer

Fabrion; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity

Ownership over product and technical direction

Mission-driven team

Strong engineering culture

Job summary

A technology startup based in San Francisco is seeking a Founding Engineer (Full Stack) to architect and build their platform. This role offers significant equity and ownership over core architecture while working on large-scale data systems and AI-native agents. Ideal candidates will have 5+ years in full stack development, experience with modern frameworks, and a passion for building impactful systems in a startup environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a full stack or backend engineer.
• Experience owning and delivering production systems end to end.
• Prior experience with modern frontend frameworks like React and Next.js.
• Familiarity with building APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, or deployment workflows at scale.
• Comfortable working in early‑stage startups or autonomous roles; founder experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable APIs, backend services, and web application components.
• Collaborate closely with product and design to prototype and ship features quickly.
• Help define engineering processes, contribute to documentation, and grow the early team.
• Collaborate with product and design to prototype and ship features quickly.
• Help define engineering processes, contribute to documentation, and grow the early team.

Skills

Full stack development

API development

Cloud infrastructure

Frontend frameworks

Team collaboration

Next.js

Distributed systems

Startup experience

Ownership

Tools

TypeScript (Node.js)

Python (FastAPI)

React

Next.js

Postgres

AWS

Docker

LangChain

LangGraph

OpenAI

Anthropic

Job description

Founding Engineer (Full Stack)

Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Type: Full-Time
Compensation: Competitive salary + meaningful equity (founding tier)

Backed by 8VC, we're building a world‑class team to tackle one of the industry’s most critical infrastructure problems.

About the Role

We’re hiring a founding full stack engineer to help architect and build the platform from day one. This is a unique opportunity to a significant portion of the tech stack and grow into a leadership role with considerable upside in equity.

You’ll be working on infrastructure that combines large‑scale data systems with AI‑native agents. This is a highly autonomous, high‑leverage role with ownership over core architecture and early team culture.

You’ll be writing production code across backend and frontend, defining interfaces between components, shaping devops and data infrastructure, and helping translate abstract concepts into working systems. If you’re someone who prefers fast feedback, direct impact, and long‑term upside — this is for you.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable APIs, backend services, and web application components.
• Contribute across the stack: data pipelines, agents, web UIs, deployment systems.
• Design and implement internal tooling, testing frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Collaborate closely with product and design to prototype and ship features quickly.
• Help define engineering processes, contribute to documentation, and grow the early team.

Our Stack

An ability to learn and grasp new technologies quickly trumps knowing the entire tech stack — you should be comfortable learning and adapting in a fast‑moving environment. The following represents the types of technologies you will be working with:

Languages: TypeScript (Node.js), Python (FastAPI)
Frontend: React, Next.js, Tailwind, shadcn/ui
Backend: Postgres, DuckDB, GraphQL (Hasura), Kafka, REST
Cloud/Infra: AWS, Docker, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Kubernetes (basic)
AI/Agents: LangChain, LangGraph, OpenAI, Anthropic, LLaMA, Pinecone, Qdrant
Governance: Keycloak, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenTelemetry, Slack integrations
Visualization: Vega, Flourish, React ReChart
Connectors: ERP, PLM, Excel, Email, Web APIs

What We’re Looking For

Experience

• 5+ years as a full stack or backend engineer.
• Experience owning and delivering production systems end‑to‑end.
• Prior experience with modern frontend frameworks (React, Next.js).
• Familiarity with building APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, or deployment workflows at scale.
• Comfortable working in early‑stage startups or autonomous roles; prior experience as a founder, founding engineer, or a 0‑1 pre‑seed startup is a big plus.

Mindset

• Comfortable with ambiguity, eager to prototype and iterate quickly.
• Strong sense of ownership — prefers to build systems rather than wait for tickets.
• Enjoys thinking about architecture, performance, and tradeoffs at every level.
• Clear communicator and pragmatic team player.
• Values equity and impact over prestige or hierarchy.
• Prior startup or founding team experience.

Bonus

• Contributions to open‑source or internal tools with impact.
• Interest in data systems, agent workflows, or LLM orchestration.

Why Join

• True ownership — early equity and influence over product and technical direction.
• Mission‑driven team solving complex data and AI problems with real‑world impact.
• Strong engineering culture focused on velocity, clarity, and long‑term thinking.
• Learning curve across AI, data infra, agents, and enterprise‑scale platforms.
• Early access to cutting‑edge AI workflows and deployment patterns.

If you want to build systems that learn, act, and evolve — with the autonomy to shape the stack and the team — we’d love to hear from you.