Founding Engineer
clera · New York · remote
ABOUT THE ROLE
Join a small, fast-moving team building multimodal AI agents across voice, SMS, and email. As a founding engineer, you will own a core product or engineering domain end to end, shape product decisions with customers, and help establish the quality and architecture of production AI systems.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Own a domain from architecture through implementation, shipping and improving production features.
- Speak with customers, synthesize feedback, and make product decisions independently.
- Build and optimize multimodal agents, including low-latency voice experiences, messaging workflows, and conversation state across channels.
- Set quality practices for non-deterministic systems, including evaluations, prompt versioning, guardrails, and drift detection.
- Work across React and Next.js frontends, Node.js backends, and Python services.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Typically 3 to 8 years of full-stack engineering experience, with a record of building and scaling products from 0 to 1 in a startup, founder, or new-product environment.
- Production proficiency in TypeScript, Node.js, React, and Next.js, plus experience building with LLM APIs or agent SDKs.
- Strong depth in at least one area: agent state and memory, AI evaluations and guardrails, B2B2C or marketplace architecture, or production voice and messaging agents.
- Experience making product decisions, conducting customer discovery, and delivering without a dedicated product manager.
- Ability to work across application and backend systems, with Python experience in real-time voice pipelines or evaluation tooling beneficial.
- Strong AI or agent systems experience, including attention to low latency, reliability, and non-deterministic behavior. Strong CS fundamentals or founder experience with demonstrable product traction are valued.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Base salary is $180,000 to $250,000 USD annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.
LOCATION
On-site, five days per week in New York, New York.