Founding Engineer
clera · New York · remote
ABOUT THE ROLE
Join an early-stage AI-powered sales automation startup as a Founding Engineer. You will own a core product or engineering domain, work directly with customers, and help shape multi-channel AI agents across voice, SMS, and email.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Own a domain end to end, from system architecture through daily production releases.
- Join customer calls, gather feedback, and make product decisions independently.
- Build and optimize multi-channel AI agents, including low-latency voice experiences and persistent conversation state.
- Set quality practices for non-deterministic systems, including evaluations, prompt versioning, guardrails, and drift detection.
- Work across React and Next.js interfaces, Node.js backends, and Python services.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Three to eight years of full-stack engineering experience, including experience shipping early-stage products at startups, as a founder, or on new product teams.
- Strong production skills in TypeScript, Node.js, React, and Next.js, plus experience building with LLM APIs or agent SDKs.
- Depth in at least one area: agent state and memory, evaluations and guardrails, B2B2C or marketplace architecture, or production voice and SMS agents.
- Experience making product decisions, conducting customer discovery, and synthesizing feedback without a dedicated product manager.
- Python experience with real-time voice pipelines or evaluation tools is valuable. Strong computer science fundamentals and experience with low-latency systems are also relevant.
- Comfort with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and occasional intense periods around launches or major customer milestones.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Annual salary: $180,000 to $250,000. Visa sponsorship is not available.
LOCATION
On-site, five days per week in New York, New York, United States.