Founding Engineer

Ersilia; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 213,000 - 288,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Salary + equity

Job summary

Ersilia in San Francisco is building the first primary care-style law firm, with a team of attorneys across 16 practice areas. We seek a founding engineer to take the AI intake receptionist from prototype to production-grade system, focusing on reliability, privacy, and security for sensitive client conversations.

You will own the platform enabling referrals between our firm and partner firms, including handling of sensitive client funds, and you will install the receptionist at partner firms,

Qualifications

• 4+ years of professional software engineering with recent work in applied AI
• Ability to take a working prototype to production-grade reliability including privacy and security hardening
• Full-stack capability to build customer-facing platform end-to-end handling sensitive client funds
• Client-facing follow-through: install and integrate at partner firms with existing telephony setups
• Based in the San Francisco Bay Area or willing to relocate, in office at least 4 days per week and flexible hours

Responsibilities

• End-to-end ownership of the conversational voice AI intake receptionist from prototype to production-grade reliability
• Privacy and security hardening for sensitive client interactions and funds handling infrastructure
• Management of the referral platform connecting partner firms and referred clients
• Installation and integration of the intake receptionist at partner firms, including IVR configurations
• Develop additional product workflows iterated from partner feedback

Skills

Applied AI

Full-stack development

Privacy and security

Telephony integration

In-office SF Bay Area availability

Tools

Voice AI systems

IVR integration

Telephony platforms

Job description

About the Company

We’re building the first primary care-style law firm. It is a team of attorneys spanning 16 practice areas,

including family law, employment law, personal injury, and immigration, whose only job is to meet one-on‑one

with people seeking a lawyer, diagnose exactly what they need, and triage them to the right outside firm or

nonprofit. Advice sessions are free to consumers. The firm earns revenue by sharing in the fees partner firms

generate from referred clients, between 15 and 35 percent depending on practice area, a structure only available

because we are a law firm under the attorney ethical rules. Distribution is the most novel part of the model. We run no paid advertising. Instead, it gives other law firms a free AI intake receptionist, a conversational voice agent that connects to their phone system alongside an embeddable web form. Between 10 and 20 percent of the calls consumer‑facing firms receive fall outside the services they offer, and when a caller’s needs do not match the services offered and the caller consents, the caller is transferred to us in real time. The company is bootstrapped and founded by a former startup and venture capital attorney. Sixteen practitioners have already signed on across practice areas, the first version of the intake receptionist is built and working, and early outreach to partner firms is converting at a 15 to 20 percent reply rate.

About the Role

This is the company’s first engineering hire, reporting directly to the Founder, who is currently the only full‑time

person in the business. The immediate mandate is to take the existing voice AI intake receptionist from a working

founder‑built prototype to a production‑grade system. These are sensitive, high‑stakes conversations with people

in legal distress, so reliability, privacy, and security are the central engineering problems, not afterthoughts.

Alongside the receptionist, the role owns the platform that facilitates referrals between our company and partner

firms, including the handling of sensitive client funds. The role is also forward‑deployed. Go‑to‑market runs through the intake product: the Founder will spend the first six to nine months full‑time signing firms onto the referral network and offering the receptionist for free, and the Founding Engineer is the person who follows through and installs it at each firm. For solo practitioners that can be as simple as call forwarding. For larger firms it means integrating with existing phone systems and IVR menus. Installation is primarily remote, with occasional on‑site work for the largest firms.

What You’ll Own

1. The conversational voice AI intake receptionist end‑to‑end, from prototype to production‑grade reliability across live client calls and the embedded web form
2. Privacy and security hardening for sensitive client interactions, and the infrastructure for handling client funds
3. The referral platform connecting partner firms, LegalCare attorneys, and referred clients
4. Installation and integration of the intake receptionist at each partner firm, including existing phone systems and IVR configurations
5. Additional product workflows beyond initial qualification, iterated directly against feedback from firms in the network

Requirements (Must‑Have)

1. 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, with recent work in applied AI at a strong company
2. Demonstrated ability to take a working prototype to production‑grade reliability in a system where failures reach real users, including privacy and security hardening
3. Full‑stack capability to build and iterate a customer‑facing platform end‑to‑end, including workflows that touch sensitive client funds
4. Client‑facing follow‑through: comfortable going into partner firms to install and integrate the product against their existing telephony setups
5. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area or willing to relocate, in office at least 4 days per week, and working beyond a standard nine to five

Nice‑to‑Have

1. Voice AI experience, for example, from companies working on conversational voice agents
2. Healthcare AI experience, particularly clinical intake, scribing, or triage, where raw patient narratives are translated into discrete clinical asks
3. Legal AI experience
4. Telephony and IVR integration experience

Benefits & Perks

1. $250,000 base salary plus 10% equity + other benefits