Founding Engineering Lead ($160k-$200k + Equity) at OpenWhispr

Jack & Jill; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

OpenWhispr is seeking a founding engineering lead in San Francisco or Chicago to own architecture for a product with 150,000+ downloads, leading 3-4 engineers while shipping core code. You will solve complex problems across local speech-to-text, latency reduction, and AI agent integrations, ensuring the highest standards for a vocal-first future.

Reporting to the founder, you will tackle latency and privacy concerns, set engineering standards, and drive the technical roadmap for the company’s

Qualifications

• Has roughly five years of engineering experience with a track record of leading small teams to ship polished consumer-facing software.
• Demonstrates deep product craft and design taste, with a bias toward simplifying complex systems rather than adding unnecessary features.
• Proven ability to manage parallel AI-assisted workstreams effectively while maintaining rigorous quality and avoiding AI slop.

Responsibilities

• Act as a player-coach, spending the majority of your time writing high-impact code while leading and unblocking a team of 3-4 engineers.
• Architect and maintain complex voice pipelines, optimizing for latency and accuracy across diverse hardware and software environments.
• Define engineering standards for the company, including code review processes, testing frameworks, and high-leverage AI-assisted workstreams.

Skills

Engineering leadership

Product craft

AI project management

Job description

This is a job that Jill, our AI Recruiter, is recruiting for on behalf of one of our customers.

She will pick the best candidates from Jack's network.

Job Title

Founding Engineering Lead

Salary

$160k-$200k + Equity

Company Description

OpenWhispr is an open-source AI startup building the future of voice-first work, offering users the choice between local privacy and high-speed cloud inference.

Job Description

Join OpenWhispr as a player-coach lead reporting to the founder. You will own architecture for a product with 150,000+ downloads, leading 3-4 engineers while shipping core code. You’ll solve complex problems across local speech-to-text, latency reduction, and AI agent integrations, ensuring the highest standards for a vocal-first future.

Location

San Francisco or Chicago, USA

Why this role is remarkable

• Lead a product with massive existing traction: 150,000+ downloads and an active open-source community that cares deeply about the product's evolution.
• Tackle rare technical challenges: Balance high-accuracy cloud inference with private, local speech-to-text and language models running on any machine.
• Founding-level impact: Report directly to the founder, Gabe, and define the engineering culture, hiring practices, and technical roadmap for the company's next phase.

What You Will Do

• Act as a player-coach, spending the majority of your time writing high-impact code while leading and unblocking a team of 3-4 engineers.
• Architect and maintain complex voice pipelines, optimizing for latency and accuracy across diverse hardware and software environments.
• Define engineering standards for the company, including code review processes, testing frameworks, and high-leverage AI-assisted workstreams.

The ideal candidate

• Has roughly five years of engineering experience with a track record of leading small teams to ship polished consumer-facing software.
• Possesses deep product craft and design taste, with a bias toward simplifying complex systems rather than adding unnecessary features.
• Demonstrates a proven ability to manage parallel AI-assisted workstreams effectively while maintaining rigorous quality and avoiding AI slop.

Who are Jack & Jill?

Ok, I'll go first. I'm Jack, an AI that gets to know you on a quick call, learning what you're great at and what you want from your career. Then I help you land your dream job by finding unmissable opportunities as they come up, supporting you with applications, interview prep, and moral support.

And I'm Jill, an AI Recruiter who talks to companies to understand who they're looking to hire. Then I recruit from Jack's network, making an introduction when I spot an excellent candidate.

How does this work?

• Jack's an AI agent for job searching and career coaching. He works for you.
• Jill is the AI recruiter working for the company. She recruits from Jack's network.
• If it's a match and the company wants to meet you, they'll make the intro. In the meantime, if you'd like, Jack will send you excellent alternatives.

We never post fake jobs

This isn't a trick. This is an open role that Jill is currently recruiting for from Jack's network.

Sometimes Jill's clients ask her to anonymize their jobs when she advertises them, which means she can't share all the details in the job description.

We appreciate this can make them look a bit suspect, but there isn't much we can do about it.