Founding Software Engineer | AI Startup | San Francisco | Up to US$300k + Equity

This Founding Software Engineer role is an on-site position in San Francisco with one of Big Wave Digital’s premier AI startup clients, for a Founding Software Engineer who wants real ownership from day one.

Founding Software Engineer | San Francisco (On-site, Full Time) | Up to US$300,000 + Equity (0.1% to 1%)

Some jobs let you join a company.

This one lets you help build it.

One of Big Wave Digital's premier AI startup clients is assembling a small, elite engineering team in San Francisco. They've developed cutting-edge AI technology tackling complex unstructured data problems and are now entering a rapid growth phase.

This is one of those rare opportunities where your fingerprints will be on everything. The product, architecture, engineering culture, deployment strategy, scalability, reliability and technical standards.

You'll work directly with founders, researchers and some exceptionally smart people solving genuinely difficult technical challenges.

No layers of management. No endless meetings. No maintaining legacy systems built ten years ago.

Just building ambitious technology from the ground up and taking it into the hands of enterprise customers.

What You’ll Build as a Founding Software Engineer

You'll own backend systems and infrastructure that power next-generation AI applications at scale. Think:

Distributed backend systems

High-throughput, low-latency services

Cloud-native architecture

Production AI infrastructure

Enterprise deployments

Reliability, observability and scalability

You'll help take ideas from whiteboard sketches and research prototypes all the way through to production systems used by real customers.

What You'll Be Doing

Architecting and building scalable backend platforms

Designing distributed systems that can handle serious workloads

Owning cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines and production environments

Building Kubernetes-based platforms and deployment frameworks

Creating monitoring, observability and reliability tooling

Driving CI/CD best practices across engineering

Working closely with founders to make critical technical decisions

Helping shape the engineering culture from day one

Scaling systems from startup MVP through enterprise-grade deployments

What We Look For in a Founding Software Engineer

Strong Python engineering experience

Experience building production-grade backend systems

Solid knowledge of distributed systems and scalable architectures

Experience with Docker, Kubernetes and containerised deployments

AWS, GCP or Azure expertise

Experience with Terraform, Pulumi or infrastructure-as-code tooling

Strong understanding of system performance, monitoring and reliability

A genuine builder mentality and ownership mindset

Bonus Points

Rust or C++

AI, ML or LLM infrastructure experience

GPU-heavy workload experience

Experience supporting enterprise deployments

Startup or founding engineer experience

Why This Role Is Special

Because opportunities to become employee #5, #10 or #15 don't come around every day.

You'll have direct influence over product direction, technical architecture and company growth. The engineering decisions you make today will still be shaping the company years from now.

And alongside a highly competitive salary package, you'll receive meaningful equity, giving you the chance to participate in the upside you're helping create.

Why Join as a Founding Software Engineer

Joining as a Founding Software Engineer means your work shapes the product, the architecture and the engineering culture from the very first commit. You will sit close to the founders, make decisions that stick, and see your code reach real users fast rather than disappearing into a backlog. For the right Founding Software Engineer, that level of ownership is rare and worth a great deal.

This is a hands-on Founding Software Engineer role for someone who enjoys ambiguity and momentum. You will help set the technical direction, mentor the engineers who join after you, and build the systems that let a small team move quickly. If you want your fingerprints on something from the ground up, this Founding Software Engineer opportunity is built for you. Apply now through Big Wave Digital and we will walk you through the detail.

The Package

Up to US$300,000 salary

Equity from 0.1% to 1%

Full health insurance

Company laptop

Food and transport credits

Visa sponsorship available

Based in San Francisco

Full-time, onsite

If you're the type of engineer who likes ownership, autonomy, technical complexity and building things that matter, we'd love to have a conversation. Apply below, or reach out to Big Wave Digital, the boutique AI and technology recruitment agency handling this search.