Unusual — Founding Engineer, Full Stack

davidjoseph-co; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

davidjoseph-co is seeking a founding engineer in San Francisco, joining a small, YC-backed AI startup building a new category of tooling. You will own the product end-to-end across the full stack, setting the technical foundation as the company scales and working directly with a high-caliber founding team.

You will design and implement agentic and LLM-based systems, build internal tooling, and collaborate with a tight team on research, infrastructure, and shipped product.

Qualifications

• 2-5 years of full-stack engineering experience with hands-on Python and React.
• Bachelor's degree in any field (does not need to be CS).
• Strong communication skills to explain technical work to non-technical stakeholders and collaborate in a small team.

Responsibilities

• Own product end-to-end across the full stack and set the technical foundation as the company scales.
• Build and extend a context-management platform powering agentic workflows.
• Research, infrastructure, and shipped product responsibilities reside with you.

Skills

LLM-based systems

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Python

React

Terraform

AWS

Job description

About the Company

We're representing a YC-backed, early-stage AI startup building a new category of tooling: helping brands understand and shape how AI models perceive them. The product applies interpretability techniques to influence what large language models "think" about a brand, and it's already driving strong, fast-growing revenue with major enterprise customers. You'd be one of the first engineers on a very small, high-caliber founding team.

Founded 2024 · ~5 people · Industry: AI, Marketing

The Role

As a founding engineer, you'll own product end-to-end across the full stack and help set the technical foundation as the company scales. This is a hands‑on, high‑ownership seat where research, infrastructure, and shipped product all sit with you.

What you'll be doing

• Building and extending a context-management platform that powers agentic workflows across customer data, communications, and deliverables
• Using black-box interpretability techniques to understand how LLMs form opinions about brands and competitors
• Owning features end-to-end, from customer need through research, infrastructure, and shipped product
• Helping establish engineering patterns and practices around agentic coding tools
• Building internal automation and custom software for clients using AI agents

Tech stack: Python, React, Terraform, AWS, LLMs, Claude Code

Requirements

• 2-5 years of full-stack engineering experience, with hands‑on Python and React
• Prior experience at a high‑growth startup (seed / Series A stage or later)
• Demonstrated experience building agentic or LLM‑based systems
• A bachelor's degree in any field (does not need to be computer science)
• Strong communication skills - able to explain technical work clearly to non‑technical stakeholders and collaborate on a small team
• Based in or willing to relocate to San Francisco for full‑time on‑site work

Nice to Haves

• Deep technical work in ML/AI, interpretability, or research‑adjacent engineering
• Published research or scientific research experience
• Early adopter of agentic coding tools such as Claude Code or Cursor

Why Join

• Founding‑engineer ownership at a tiny, high‑performing team defining a brand‑new AI category
• Real revenue traction and enterprise customers already in production
• Direct work with an experienced, technical founding team
• Competitive base plus meaningful early equity

Details

• Location: San Francisco, CA
• Work policy: On‑site, 5 days/week
• Compensation: $170K - $250K + equity
• Visa sponsorship: No new sponsorship; open to visa transfers (e.g. OPT, H-1B), with support for existing visa holders
• Employment type: Full‑time