Founding Engineer

Needle; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 80,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Significant equity

Relocation assistance to San Francisco

Job summary

Needle in San Francisco is seeking an exceptional founding engineer to help build the AI-native ATS from the ground up. You’ll own end-to-end features across the stack (TypeScript, NextJS, React, Python, Google Cloud) and shape the product and engineering culture early.

You’ll thrive on solving real user problems with fast, craft-driven delivery. This early role includes substantial equity and relocation assistance to San Francisco as Needle scales with a world-class team.

Qualifications

Responsibilities

• Build and ship features end-to-end across the stack (TypeScript, NextJS, React, Python, Google Cloud).
• Work on agentic systems: MCP, skills, sandboxing, and agent harnesses as part of the platform.
• Stay close to users and translate real problems into reliable systems.

Job description

Full time San Francisco $80k–$120k (+ equity)

About Needle

The success of a company is defined by the people it hires.

As companies scale, maintaining a high talent bar becomes difficult. The hiring process is often scattered, inefficient, and takes a toll on the entire team.

We are building the AI-native ATS for agent-driven hiring. Needle helps companies build and maintain a high talent bar.

Needle uses specialised agents to handle admin parts of the hiring process, such as sourcing, coordination, and outreach, allowing hiring managers to spend more high-quality time with candidates. Needle agent incorporates the skills and knowledge to help companies set up hiring processes that follow best practices.

Unlike traditional ATS, Needle works directly inside Slack and Claude, sparing teams from learning confusing ATS interfaces.

We raised a $1.3M pre-seed round from tier-1 investors and angels from companies like Google, DeepMind, and unicorn startup founders.

Note: We started in Berlin but are relocating to San Francisco. If you are based in Berlin, we will help you relocate\!

The role

We're looking for an exceptional founding engineer — someone with strong technical fundamentals, high agency, and the ambition to grow quickly in an intense, high-performance environment.

You’ll take ownership early, work on technically difficult problems, and help shape both the product and engineering culture from the ground up.

You'll thrive if

You like to solve problems end-to-end. You like having an understanding of the whole system, work across the tech stack, and ship things with the user in mind.

You care about your craft. It's important to ship quickly, but we want to create an environment where craft matters. We want our product to feel like Linear. The last thing we want to hear from our users is "vibe-coded".

You're a low-ego team player. You communicate clearly, take feedback well, and raise the bar for those around you. We believe a small team of A-players is exponentially greater than the sum of its parts.

You're deeply curious about AI systems. You're excited by the challenge of building real products with LLMs, and you learn and adapt quickly.

What you'll do

Build and ship features end-to-end using our stack: TypeScript, NextJS, React, Python, Google Cloud.

Work on agentic systems: MCP, skills, sandboxing, and agent harnesses are just some of the things we think about and that you’ll work on directly.

Stay close to the users: translate real user problems into elegant, reliable systems. We are privileged to work with some of the best startups in Europe and the US, and we get to learn a lot from them.

Leverage AI tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and others to supercharge your development workflow.

What's in it for you

Be part of a small, ambitious team with real ownership of the product and company.

Experiment with cutting-edge AI and agents. We're building something innovative and have to stay up to date with the developments in agentic systems.

$80k–$120k salary + significant equity for early employees.

We will help you relocate to San Francisco with us.

You should apply if

You've spent multiple years coding (including in production environments, internships, or side projects).

You've shown strong signals of excellence: top academic record (e.g., Oxford, Cambridge, TUM, ETH, etc.), hackathon wins, selective scholarships, or open-source contributions.

You want to work in an environment where craftsmanship, speed, and impact matter equally.

You're ready to learn fast, take ownership early, and become world-class.