Let’s get started
By clicking ‘Next’, I agree to the Terms of Service
and Privacy Policy, and consent to receive emails from Rise
Jobs / Job page
Founding Engineer image - Rise Careers
Job details

Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer (Full Stack)

Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Type: Full-Time
Compensation: Competitive salary + meaningful equity (founding tier)

Backed by 8VC, we're building a world-class team to tackle one of the industry’s most critical infrastructure problems.

About the Role

We’re hiring a founding full stack engineer to help architect and build the platform from day one. This is a unique opportunity to a significant portion of the tech stack and grow into a leadership role with considerable upside in equity.

You’ll be working on infrastructure that combines large-scale data systems with AI-native agents. This is a highly autonomous, high-leverage role with ownership over core architecture and early team culture.

You’ll be writing production code across backend and frontend, defining interfaces between components, shaping devops and data infrastructure, and helping translate abstract concepts into working systems. If you’re someone who prefers fast feedback, direct impact, and long-term upside — this is for you.

Responsibilities

  • Architect and build scalable APIs, backend services, and web application components

  • Contribute across the stack: data pipelines, agents, web UIs, deployment systems

  • Design and implement internal tooling, testing frameworks, and CI/CD pipelines

  • Collaborate closely with product and design to prototype and ship features quickly

  • Help define engineering processes, contribute to documentation, and grow the early team

Our Stack

An ability to learn and grasp new technologies quickly trumps knowing the entire tech stack — you should be comfortable learning and adapting in a fast-moving environment. The following represents the types of technologies you will be working with:

Languages: TypeScript (Node.js), Python (FastAPI)
Frontend: React, Next.js, Tailwind, shadcn/ui
Backend: Postgres, DuckDB, GraphQL (Hasura), Kafka, REST
Cloud/Infra: AWS, Docker, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Kubernetes (basic)
AI/Agents: LangChain, LangGraph, OpenAI, Anthropic, LLaMA, Pinecone, Qdrant
Governance: Keycloak, Open Policy Agent (OPA), OpenTelemetry, Slack integrations
Visualization: Vega, Flourish, React ReChart
Connectors: ERP, PLM, Excel, Email, Web APIs

What We’re Looking For

Experience:

  • 5+ years as a full stack or backend engineer

  • Experience owning and delivering production systems end-to-end

  • Prior experience with modern frontend frameworks (React, Next.js)

  • Familiarity with building APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, or deployment workflows at scale

  • Comfortable working in early-stage startups or autonomous roles, prior experience as a founder, founding engineer, or a 0-1 pre-seed startup is a big plus

Mindset:

  • Comfortable with ambiguity, eager to prototype and iterate quickly

  • Strong sense of ownership — prefers to build systems rather than wait for tickets

  • Enjoys thinking about architecture, performance, and tradeoffs at every level

  • Clear communicator and pragmatic team player

  • Values equity and impact over prestige or hierarchy

  • Prior startup or founding team experience

Bonus:

  • Contributions to open-source or internal tools with impact

  • Interest in data systems, agent workflows, or LLM orchestration

Why Join

  • True ownership — early equity and influence over product and technical direction

  • Mission-driven team solving complex data and AI problems with real-world impact

  • Strong engineering culture focused on velocity, clarity, and long-term thinking

  • Learning curve across AI, data infra, agents, and enterprise-scale platforms

  • Early access to cutting-edge AI workflows and deployment patterns

If you want to build systems that learn, act, and evolve — with the autonomy to shape the stack and the team — we’d love to hear from you.

Average salary estimate

$195000 / YEARLY (est.)
min
max
$160000K
$230000K

If an employer mentions a salary or salary range on their job, we display it as an "Employer Estimate". If a job has no salary data, Rise displays an estimate if available.

Similar Jobs
Photo of the Rise User
TEGNA Inc. Hybrid WBIR-TV Knoxville
Posted 3 hours ago

TEGNA seeks a React Native developer experienced with Fire TV and CTV platforms to build performant, large-screen streaming apps and integrate video, ad tech, and analytics.

Photo of the Rise User
Hewlett Packard Enterprise | HPE Hybrid Roseville, California, United States of America
Posted 14 hours ago

Work with Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a Software Engineering Intern contributing to frontend or backend projects in a hybrid Roseville position.

Symmetrio Hybrid No location specified
Posted 15 hours ago

Experienced firmware engineer needed to develop and optimize embedded C/C++ firmware for ARM Cortex-M medical imaging platforms with emphasis on real-time performance and regulatory compliance.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 8 hours ago

Experienced software developer needed to architect and maintain performance-support tools and XML/SCORM-based content solutions for DoD/Navy training and IETM products.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 8 hours ago

Lead architecture and scale distributed backend services for Lightspark's Spark, a Bitcoin-native Layer 2 for fast, low-cost global payments.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 14 hours ago

Build and scale high-performance backend systems for Entrata's AI product suite as a Backend Software Engineer working across teams to deliver production-grade solutions.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 21 hours ago

Senior Angular Developer needed to lead front-end architecture and build high-performance web applications for a growing financial SaaS product (remote, US).

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 5 hours ago

Develop real-time embedded and browser-based pilot-facing displays and controls in C/C++ for safety-critical aviation systems at Reliable Robotics.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 21 hours ago

At Mark43, you'll architect and implement AI-augmented multi-agent systems that streamline software development and delivery across engineering teams.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 18 hours ago

Virta Health is hiring a Senior Site Reliability Engineer to lead AI-driven observability, automation, and reliability work across a remote-first infrastructure supporting large-scale clinical products.

SEC Hybrid 645 Clyde Avenue, Mountain View, CA, USA
Posted 19 hours ago

Lead a small engineering team to design, build, and operate the ad framework and media playback systems for a flagship TV streaming product, shaping technical vision and delivery.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 1 hour ago

Serve Robotics is hiring an ML Performance Engineer to optimize and deploy real-time ML models on NVIDIA Jetson-based delivery robots in Los Angeles.

Photo of the Rise User
Posted 8 hours ago

Staff SRE/DevOps Engineer needed to drive a multi-region cloud rearchitecture, automation, and operational excellence at GeoComply while mentoring engineering teams and enforcing robust CI/CD and security practices.

MATCH
Calculating your matching score...
FUNDING
SENIORITY LEVEL REQUIREMENT
TEAM SIZE
No info
HQ LOCATION
No info
EMPLOYMENT TYPE
Full-time, onsite
DATE POSTED
August 26, 2025
Risa star 🔮 Hi, I'm Risa! Your AI
Career Copilot
Want to see a list of jobs tailored to
you, just ask me below!