Founding Engineer
clera · San Francisco · onsite
ABOUT THE ROLE
Join an early engineering team building AI infrastructure for service businesses. As the first engineering hire, you will work directly with the founder to evolve a functioning product into reliable, scalable systems for AI agents and the people who oversee them.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Shape the architecture and turn the current product into infrastructure designed to scale to a million users.
- Build and operate the agent runtime, including orchestration, memory, verification, and tools for trustworthy AI work.
- Own projects end to end across backend, infrastructure, frontend, and agent systems.
- Set technical standards and choose the stack and engineering practices as the team grows.
- Ship improvements weekly to people using the product in real businesses.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- At least 2 years shipping production software, or an equivalent track record as a founder or independent builder; exceptional early-career engineers are also encouraged.
- Experience building and operating production LLM or AI agent systems that real users rely on.
- Full-stack range across backend, infrastructure, and user interfaces, with the ability to take work from idea to production.
- Experience making technical decisions in a small team, ideally as a founder, early hire, or technical lead.
- Strong generalist engineering skills and familiarity with agent orchestration, memory, evaluation, verification, or multi-agent workflows.
- Ability to explain complex technical decisions and deliver reliably at a fast pace.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Base salary is $150,000 to $250,000 annually, plus meaningful founding equity. Visa sponsorship and relocation support are available.
LOCATION
On-site in San Francisco, California, United States. The team works together in person.