Founding Engineer San Francisco or New York

Eico; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Eico is seeking a founding engineering leader to build the core software for our company-building agents in San Francisco or New York, SF preferred. You will own the product and platform layers, including workflows, agent backends, data collection, and internal tooling, enabling our AI systems to find demand, acquire customers, deliver work, and generate verifiable records.

This is a rare chance to shape a foundational system for early-stage incubation teams.

Qualifications

• Staff-level or principal-level engineering with end-to-end ownership.
• Strong Python and TypeScript capabilities.
• Experience building production systems.
• Familiarity with AI systems, data collection, and orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Own the product and platform layer for company-building agents: workflows, tools, state and observability.
• Develop agent backends and harnesses enabling demand discovery, delivery, and trace creation.
• Build data collection systems across agent workflows: actions, interactions, feedback, outcomes.
• Create internal tools for incubation teams, researchers, and operators to inspect and improve agents.
• Develop infrastructure for provenance, lineage, auditability, and quality checks.
• Uphold engineering standards for architecture, quality, speed, security, and taste.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

Go

Rust

SQL

AI/agent systems

Job description

Engineering · Company Building Agents San Francisco or New York · SF preferred

You will build the core software systems behind Eico’s company-building agents.

This is a founding engineering role for a staff/principal-caliber generalistwho can operate across the stack: agent backends, data collection, productsurfaces, workflow orchestration, internal tools, infrastructure, reliability,and verification. Your work will make it possible for AI systems to finddemand, acquire customers, deliver work, and turn activity into trusted recordsthe rest of Eico can build on.

We are hiring a small number of unusually strongtechnical people early.

What you’ll own:

• 01 The product and platform layer for Eico’s company-building agents: workflows, tools, state, permissions, execution, and observability.
• 02 Agent backends and harnesses that let AI systems find demand, acquire customers, deliver work, and create traces we can train from and verify.
• 03 Data collection systems across the workflows where company-building happens: agent actions, customer interactions, feedback, delivery quality, revenue events, and failures.
• 04 Internal tools for incubation teams, researchers, reviewers, and operators to inspect, improve, and trust what agents are doing.
• 05 Infrastructure that turns messy real-world activity into reliable records: provenance, lineage, auditability, quality checks, and verified outcomes.
• 06 The engineering standard for the company: architecture, code quality, speed, reliability, security, and taste.

What we’re looking for:

• Staff-level, principal-level, or equivalent engineering ability. Titles matter less than evidence.
• At least 5 years of experience, with a record of owning important systems end to end.
• Top engineering-company or frontier startup background preferred: OpenAI,Anthropic, DeepMind, Meta, Google, Stripe, Databricks, Palantir, Scale AI,Ramp, Cursor, Cognition, Harvey, Perplexity, Retool, Vercel, Linear, Airbnb,Uber, Coinbase, Plaid, Figma, or equivalent.
• Has built production systems that were complex, high-leverage, and used by real people.
• Strong across at least two of: backend systems, data infrastructure, full-stack product, AI/agent systems, distributed systems, infra, security, or internal tooling.
• Strong Python and TypeScript preferred. Go, Rust, SQL, data systems, cloud infra, or ML tooling are strong pluses.
• Can work close to AI systems: tool use, eval loops, RAG, inference APIs, agent orchestration, data collection, and model-facing workflows.
• Can turn ambiguity into architecture, then into shipped product.
• Has taste. Builds simple systems where possible and serious systems where necessary.
• High-agency operator. Comfortable being handed the hardest, messiest technical problems and owning them.

This is probably not for you if:

• You need a narrow, fully specified engineering lane.
• You only want to build clean backend services and avoid product, data, or AI messiness.
• You have not owned production systems end to end.
• You are uncomfortable working directly with founders, researchers, and incubation teams.
• You optimize for process over speed, or speed over correctness. Eico needs both.