Founding Software Engineer

Octavia Technologies; San Francisco (CA); On-site; Full time

Job description

The role

We are looking for a true builder and a hacker. You need to be a Full-Stack Software Engineer yourself, and you will be the technical leader responsible for architecting, building, and scaling our core platform.

You will be instrumental in turning our vision into a functional and robust product. This role is not just about writing code; it's about leading, innovating, and tackling complex challenges in a fast-paced, uncertain environment.

It is not just software engineering - we create innovative approaches that are based on fundamental physics and math problems - and you will need to create them too and execute the idea through software.

The role is in-person in Palo Alto, CA.

Responsibilities

• End-to-End Development: Design, develop, and deploy the entire software stack, including the backend systems, APIs, and front-end user interfaces.
• Infrastructure & AI Integration: Build and manage the cloud infrastructure that supports our agentic systems and AI models. This includes data pipelines, model serving, and scalable compute environments.
• Prototyping & Iteration: Rapidly prototype new features and solutions, translating product ideas into tangible, shippable code.
• Leadership: Act as a technical leader and mentor to future engineering hires, establishing best practices, code standards, and a strong engineering culture.
• Collaboration: Work closely with the AI and Science teams to ensure the seamless integration of AI models into the product and to develop the necessary tools for data collection, model training, and inference on real scientific data.

Who you are

You are a resourceful and resilient builder with an entrepreneurial mindset. You thrive in ambiguity and are excited by the prospect of building something from scratch. You are not afraid to get your hands dirty and are equally comfortable with high-level architecture as you are with low-level implementation details.

You offer solutions instead of listing the problems. You are driven by the dopamine you get from solving complex problems. You are punctual and organized, and you know how to deliver results.

Required Qualifications

• Full-Stack Expertise: Proven experience building and shipping full-stack applications. You should be comfortable working across the entire stack, from front-end to backend and infrastructure.
• AI/ML Infrastructure: Direct experience with MLOps and building production-grade AI/ML infrastructure.
• Data & Scientific Computing: Strong familiarity with data-intensive applications, geospatial data, and scientific computing.
• Technical Toolkit: Expertise in one or more backend languages such as Go, Rust, or Java. Experience with cloud platforms like AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda), GCP (Vertex AI, BigQuery), or Azure. You should be familiar with containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Leadership Potential: The ability to lead and mentor a team in the future.
• Python Proficiency: Strong expertise in Python is a plus, given its widespread use in the AI/ML community.
• Experience with front-end frameworks (e.g., React, Vue, Angular).
• Experience with Palantir (Foundry and ADP) is a huge plus.
• Prior experience at an early-stage startup.