Founding Engineer

 

Title of Role: Founding Engineer (Backend/Infrastructure)
Location: San Francisco, CA
Company Stage of Funding: Seed Stage (~$3–4M raised)
Office Type: Onsite (San Francisco)
Salary: $170,000 – $210,000 + Equity (1–2.5%)

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Company Description

Our client is an early-stage, venture-backed startup building the monetization layer for consumer AI applications. Their platform enables AI products to seamlessly integrate advertising, helping developers generate revenue while allowing advertisers to reach users at the right moment.

Despite being at a very early stage, the company has already achieved significant traction, reaching millions of users across its partner network in a short period of time. Backed by strong investors and led by a founder with deep experience in infrastructure and AI ecosystems, the company is now focused on scaling its core platform to meet rapidly growing demand.

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What You Will Do

• Design and build core backend systems that power a high-scale ad network for AI applications

• Develop low-latency ad decisioning pipelines (retrieval, ranking, scoring) under strict performance constraints

• Build and scale infrastructure capable of handling millions of requests and rapid user growth

• Create developer-facing SDKs to enable seamless integration for AI application partners

• Implement systems for ad delivery, pacing, budget management, and frequency capping

• Develop observability tools and dashboards to monitor performance metrics such as latency, fill rate, and revenue

• Work across backend, infrastructure, and product to ship features quickly and iteratively

• Take full ownership of systems from design to deployment in a highly autonomous environment

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Ideal Candidate Background

• 2–8 years of software engineering experience with a strong backend focus

• Experience building and scaling high-traffic, consumer-facing systems

• Strong understanding of distributed systems, APIs, and performance optimization

• Experience working with backend technologies such as Python, Node.js, or similar

• Proven ability to ship products or features with real user impact

• Comfortable operating in fast-paced, ambiguous startup environments

• Demonstrated ownership mindset and ability to work independently

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to handle scaling challenges

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Preferred

• Experience at high-growth consumer tech or infrastructure companies

• Background working on ad-tech, marketplaces, or real-time decisioning systems

• Experience with low-latency systems or high-throughput data pipelines

• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and modern tooling (Terraform, databases like ClickHouse, MongoDB)

• Experience building developer tools or SDKs

• Founder, early employee, or entrepreneurial background

• Familiarity with modern AI tools and development workflows

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Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive base salary: $170,000 – $210,000

• Significant early-stage equity (1% – 2.5%)

• Opportunity to join as one of the first engineers and shape the core platform

• Direct collaboration with the founder and high ownership from day one

• Exposure to high-scale infrastructure challenges typically seen at much later-stage companies

• Fast hiring process with urgency due to rapid growth

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This is a rare opportunity to join a startup that already has real traction and is tackling hard infrastructure problems early, with meaningful ownership and upside.