Founding Engineer: Build MVP & Launch a Startup

Idea Fund of La Crosse; La Crosse (WI); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Idea Fund of La Crosse is seeking a founding engineer to co-create a new company. This is a builder’s seat—the engineer writes the first code, ships the first product, and turns a validated concept into a real business.

The role begins during concept validation, with funding for prototyping and early builds, and converts to full-time as the venture forms and funds. The ideal candidate will own the full tech stack in an early-stage setting, shape the product, engage early customers, and earn a

Qualifications

• Strong builders at any career stage; ground-floor role.
• Full-stack capability across front end, back end, and infrastructure.
• Demonstrated ability to ship real software, production product, or open-source.
• Pragmatic technical decision-making: know when to build for scale and when to ship.
• Excellent communication with non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Scope, build and ship a market-ready MVP for early customers.
• Decide on cloud infrastructure, data models, APIs, deployment pipelines.
• Support customer discovery and early pilots with real-world feedback.
• Establish development standards, CI/CD, and tooling from scratch with AI aids.
• Set code quality and engineering culture for future hires.

Skills

Full-stack development

Ship production software

Frontend development

Backend development

Infra deployment

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud platforms

Job description

Idea Fund of La Crosse is seeking a founding engineer to co-create a new company. This is a builder’s seat—the engineer writes the first code, ships the first product, and turns a validated concept into a real business.

The role begins during concept validation, with funding for prototyping and early builds, and converts to full-time as the venture forms and funds. The ideal candidate will own the full tech stack in an early-stage setting, shape the product, engage early customers, and earn a