Porter — Founding Engineer

davidjoseph-co; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days PTO

30 days remote per year

Relocation covered

Job summary

davidjoseph-co is seeking a Founding Engineer in NYC to help build at every layer of the cloud infrastructure stack, including production software and customer-facing problem solving. You will own the end-to-end lifecycle, debug deeply, and influence infrastructure decisions with product intuition.

Ideal candidates have 5–8 years in startups, hands-on infra experience, and a track record as a founding engineer at startups. In-person NYC work 5 days a week with relocation covered.

Qualifications

• 5-8 years startup experience.
• Founding engineer with hands-on startup exposure.
• Founding engineer at ~2 startups.
• Strong infra background OR exceptional generalist with infra excitement.
• End-to-end ownership in production.
• NYC in-person 5 days, relocation covered.

Responsibilities

• Write production-grade software powering Porter's platform across cloud infrastructure surfaces.
• Own the end-to-end development lifecycle from architectural design through production deployment.
• Debug deeply by shelling into VMs, parsing logs, and identifying root causes.
• Read open-source code to debug third-party dependencies.
• Collaborate on anything touching users' infrastructure and provide feedback.
• Work in 2-week project cycles with autonomy to propose and drive your work.
• Talk to customers directly via Slack and bring product intuition to infrastructure decisions.

Skills

Startup experience

Founding engineer

Infra ownership

End-to-end ownership

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Kubernetes

Job description

Porter — Founding Engineer

Type: Full-time | On-site | New York City, NY
Compensation: $200,000–$270,000 + competitive equity
Hiring count: 1
Visa sponsorship: Yes — H-1B, O-1, OPT
Reports to: Not specified on the role page (Stage 2 of the process is "Intro with David")

The Role

Porter is hiring a Founding Engineer to build at every level of the cloud infrastructure stack — production software, customer‑facing problem solving, and ownership of complex technical surfaces inside the platform.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Write production‑grade software that powers Porter's platform across cloud infrastructure surfaces
• Own the end‑to‑end development lifecycle, from architectural design through production deployment
• Debug at the deepest levels: shell into virtual machines, dig through log files, find root causes
• Read through open‑source repositories to debug third‑party dependencies
• Collaborate on anything that touches users' infrastructure and provide meaningful feedback
• Work in 2‑week project cycles with full autonomy to propose and drive your own work
• Talk to customers directly via Slack and bring product intuition to infrastructure decisions

Tech stack: Cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP), Kubernetes, distributed systems, networking

Requirements

• 5‑8 years startup experience
• Founding engineer
• Founding engineer at ~2 startups
• Strong infra background OR exceptional generalist with infra excitement
• End‑to‑end ownership in production
• NYC in‑person 5 days, relocation covered

Green Flags

• Founding engineer or earliest technical hire at a startup
• Hands‑on infrastructure experience
• Shipped products at meaningful scale
• High slope; figures things out without a playbook

Red Flags

• Only big‑tech infrastructure experience
• Cannot articulate why infrastructure excites you
• Perfectionist who optimizes for elegance over shipping
• Needs a defined scope, team structure, or process to operate

Benefits

• 30 days PTO
• 30 days remote per year
• Relocation covered

Role Details

Salary $200,000–$270,000
Equity Competitive (percentage not stated)
In‑person NYC, 5 days/week; relocation covered
Visa sponsorship H-1B, O-1, OPT
Employment type Full-time
Location New York City, NY