Senior/Staff Founding Full-Stack Engineer

David Joseph & Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-site

Equity 1–2%

Visa sponsorship

Job summary

David Joseph & Company is seeking a Senior/Staff Founding Full-Stack Engineer to own the product and system end-to-end. You will build the core machinery that lets autonomous agents operate safely in real production environments, including how work is orchestrated, identity and permissions governance, and secure credential handling.

The role emphasizes backend and systems work across a growing seed-stage AI startup, with on-site collaboration in San Francisco and compensation comprising

Qualifications

• Senior/Staff-level engineer with strongest focus on backend and systems architecture.
• Experience designing and operating complex production systems and explaining failures and recoveries.
• Depth in IAM/authorization, policy systems, workflow orchestration, security, multi-tenant SaaS, or agent infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Build the core workflow engine for long-running human and agent work with durable state, retries, and auditability.
• Design identity and authorization for humans, services and agents, including principals, delegation, and tenant isolation.
• Develop a versioned policy engine governing who/what can perform actions and on which resources.

Skills

Backend architecture

Systems design

IAM/Authorization

Policy systems

Workflow orchestration

Security

Multi-tenant SaaS

Agent infrastructure

Virtualized execution

Engineering mindset

Job description

Senior/Staff Founding Full-Stack Engineer, Agent Systems

San Francisco, CA · On-site · Full-time
Compensation: $200,000–$300,000 + 1%–2% equity

About the Company

Our client is a seed-stage startup building AI coworkers for IT and security teams — an agent that registers as a governed identity, requests scoped access one task at a time, and acts only under human approval. They've raised a $6M seed from a strong group of operators and investors, and are already working with several design partners as a small founding team.

Founded 2026 · 1–10 people · Industry: AI tooling for IT & security

The Role

This is a founding engineering role that is deliberately backend- and systems-heavy — "full-stack" here means owning the product and the system end-to-end. You'll be building the core machinery that lets autonomous agents act safely inside real production environments: how work is orchestrated, how identity and permissions are governed, and how sensitive credentials are handled.

What you'll be doing

• Build the workflow engine for long-running human and agent work: durable state, retries, idempotency, approvals, replay, compensation, and auditability
• Design identity and authorization for humans, services, and agents: principals, delegation, scoped sessions, tenant isolation, and traceable authority
• Build a versioned policy engine governing who or what can perform which action, on which resource, under what context
• Own secure storage and use of customer keys, OAuth tokens, and admin credentials: isolation, rotation, ephemeral injection, revocation, and blast-radius containment
• Own the boundary between probabilistic model behavior and deterministic execution: validation, evals, and release gates
• Build isolated virtual environments and dev boxes for agents, and ship the interfaces and APIs to author, approve, inspect, debug, and operate all of this in production

Requirements

• Senior/Staff-level engineer, strongest in backend and systems architecture, and comfortable reaching across frontend, data, infrastructure, and product
• A track record of designing and operating complex production systems, and the ability to talk through what broke, how you recovered, and what you changed
• Real depth in at least one of: IAM/authorization, policy systems, workflow orchestration, security, multi-tenant SaaS, agent infrastructure, or virtualized execution
• A rigorous engineering mindset — reasons in invariants, threat models, failure modes, and user outcomes
• Moves quickly from ambiguity without trading away correctness, security, or operability
• Able to work on-site in San Francisco, Monday to Friday, at startup intensity

Nice to Haves

• A standout signal of excellence in some area — leading an important team at a high-growth company, top competitive-programming results, or elite achievement in another demanding pursuit
• A CS/engineering degree from a top program, or genuinely exceptional experience in its place
• Time spent on a high-caliber team at a strong engineering company
• A big-tech background, for the scalability and security depth it brings
• A high-agency track record — former founders, or early engineers who owned architecture, production, and customer-facing product

Why Join

• Genuine founding-engineer scope with true end-to-end ownership of product and system
• A well-backed seed-stage team already live with design partners
• Deep, meaningful systems and security problems at the frontier of agent infrastructure

Details

• Location — San Francisco, CA
• Work policy — On-site, Monday to Friday
• Compensation — $200,000–$300,000 + 1%–2% equity
• Visa sponsorship — Available (H-1B, O-1, OPT)
• Employment type — Full-time