Founding Engineer, Series A

Bluebird; New York (NY); On-site; USD 200,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

Visa sponsorship

Founding-level options

Direct line to founder

Job summary

Bluebird is hiring three founding engineers to build a new product team in our New York office. You will report to the VP of Product and shape architecture, ownership, and shipping decisions from day one.

You’ll lead platform features, own end-to-end components, and drive cloud infra with a focus on real users and enterprise needs. Relocation and visa sponsorship available for the right candidate.

Qualifications

• Experience leading cross-functional teams and setting technical direction.
• Shipped a significant production component end-to-end.
• Comfort with structured code reviews and handling hard feedback.
• Strong experience with cloud platforms (GCP/AWS) and microservices.
• Nice to have: GPU rig at home, on-prem/air-gapped deployments, AI product work.

Responsibilities

• Tech lead on platform features with architectural ownership.
• Own big components end to end: build, deploy, billing, compliance.
• Build cloud infrastructure and microservices for real users and enterprise needs.
• Test new AI models and ship the ones worth shipping.
• Identify scalability, reliability and regulatory issues early.

Skills

Tech-lead experience

End-to-end delivery

Code reviews

Cloud platforms

Microservices

GPU/air-gapped deployments

Tools

GCP

AWS

Vercel

Redis

MongoDB

Lambda

Cloud Run

S3

Microservices pattern

Job description

Hey! Thanks for checking this out. This is one of the coolest engineering roles we’ve worked on.

• This is New York based, 3 days a week in a brand new office on Park Avenue. Relocation support and visa sponsorship are both available.
• You have to actually love AI. Not “I use Copilot at work.” More like you ran the new open-weights release locally the weekend it dropped, just to see what it could do.

The company is…

The team behind one of the most widely used open-source computer vision model families in the world. Millions of developers use their tools, and their SaaS platform serves everyone from solo builders to enterprises running fully air-gapped, on-prem deployments with strict compliance needs. Small team, huge footprint, extremely high bar.

What’s in it for you?

They’re hiring three founding engineers to build a second product team from scratch in the new New York office. You’d report straight to the VP of Product. This team is built differently from the first one on purpose: more ownership, more say over architecture, more room for your own ideas. You won’t be picking up tickets. You’ll decide what gets built and how.

They offer the following…

• USD $200k-$280k base.
• Founding-level options, with really good flexibility
• If needed: Relocation support to New York, plus visa sponsorship.
• A direct line to the founder and product leadership. No layers.
• Popular, non-exotic stack chosen so LLMs can help you move fast.

What will you do?

• Tech lead on platform features. The architecture calls are yours.
• Own big product components end to end: build, deploy, billing, compliance.
• Build cloud infra and microservices that handle real users and real enterprise requirements.
• Test new AI models and tools, and ship the ones worth shipping.
• Spot scalability, reliability and regulatory problems early, before anyone has to ask.

You need these skills…

• Tech-lead experience setting technical direction for a cross-functional team. You don’t need a manager title.
• You’ve shipped a significant product component to production end to end at a small or mid-sized company, from backend and databases through compliance.
• You’ve worked somewhere with structured code reviews and demanding clients, and you take hard feedback without getting defensive.
• Strong software engineering with GCP or AWS. Stack: GCP, AWS, Vercel, Redis, MongoDB, Lambda, Cloud Run, S3, microservices.
• Nice to have: a GPU rig at home, on-prem or air-gapped deployments, computer vision, EM experience, tech-lead work on AI products.

Why NOW, why here?

• The New York office just opened and this team doesn’t exist yet. The three people hired now set how it builds, ships and works.

Get in as one of the three founding engineers. Everyone who joins after builds on what you set up