Founding Full-Stack Engineer

Empathy Talent; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity 0.25%–2.00%

Job summary

Empathy Talent is seeking an ambitious Front/Full-Stack Engineer to become the first engineering hire at a fast-growing AI startup in San Francisco. You’ll work directly with the founders to shape product architecture and engineering culture from day one.

You’ll own end-to-end development across AI-powered platform components, with a focus on React, TypeScript, and Node.js, and help define scalable cloud infrastructure and production-grade systems.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of software engineering experience with full-stack capability.
• Strong experience building production-ready applications using React, TypeScript, and Node.js.
• Comfortable owning features across the entire technology stack from frontend to backend.

Responsibilities

• Partner with founders to shape product direction through user feedback.
• Design, build, and ship full-stack features including authentication and core services.
• Improve and scale AI-powered systems and tooling for better performance.
• Develop prompt engineering strategies and evaluation frameworks for AI output.
• Build scalable cloud infrastructure to support millions of applications.
• Establish engineering best practices and high-performance culture from day one.

Skills

React

TypeScript

Node.js

Tools

AWS

Neon Database

Job description

Location: San Francisco, CA (Onsite or Hybrid)

Job Type: Full-time

Role: Engineering – Full Stack

Experience: 3+ years

Work Authorization: U.S. citizen or valid U.S. work visa required

Compensation

• Equity: 0.25% – 2.00%

This is an opportunity to become the first engineering hire at a fast-growing AI startup, partnering directly with the founders to build the product from the ground up while helping define the engineering culture, architecture, and long-term technical vision.

You'll have ownership across the entire platform—from AI systems and backend infrastructure to user-facing experiences—while solving complex technical challenges that will directly impact the product's success.

This could be a strong fit if you consider yourself roughly 70/30 frontend to backend—you’re strongest in React and frontend product development, but you’re comfortable owning and shipping across the full stack.

What You'll Be Doing

• Partner directly with founders and early customers to shape product direction through continuous user feedback.
• Design, build, and ship full-stack features that become the foundation of the platform, including authentication, payments, storage, and core application services.
• Improve and scale AI-powered systems, making agentic workflows more reliable, intelligent, and production-ready.
• Develop prompt engineering strategies, evaluation frameworks, and tooling to continually improve AI performance and output quality.
• Build highly scalable cloud infrastructure capable of supporting millions of production applications.
• Help establish engineering best practices, technical standards, and a high-performance development culture from day one.

What They're Looking For

• Strong experience building production-ready applications using React, TypeScript, and Node.js.
• A builder's mentality with a high degree of ownership—you enjoy taking ideas from concept through production.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced startup where you'll solve problems across the entire technology stack.
• Passion for creating exceptional user experiences with an eye for product quality and craftsmanship.
• Excited by ambiguity, moving quickly, and helping shape both the product and the company.

Technology

The platform is built around an AI-first architecture designed to simplify modern application development through an integrated technology stack.

Core Stack

• React
• TypeScript
• Node.js
• AWS (Lambda, CloudFront, S3, and related services)
• Neon Database

What Makes This Opportunity Different

You'll be joining at the earliest stage, where your technical decisions will have a lasting impact. The team has built a sophisticated AI platform featuring:

• Proprietary AI-first development framework
• Custom runtime supporting both frontend and backend execution
• Secure sandbox environment for AI-generated code
• Advanced multi-agent AI system with intelligent debugging capabilities
• Custom deployment infrastructure optimized specifically for AI-powered applications

If you're looking for a true 0→1 founding opportunity where you'll help architect both the product and the engineering organization while working at the intersection of AI and full-stack development, this is the type of role that rarely comes to market.