Founding Product Engineer
About the company
A pre-seed startup in San Francisco is building the operating system for AI-native service companies: a workforce of AI agents that runs a service business's day-to-day operations end to end. The founder is a second-time founder with a prior exit who has just relocated to SF, and the company recently closed its angel round with leading operator-angels from Europe and the US.
The role
You will be one of the first three engineers, and the first ones hired. This is the founding product seat: you own the entire product experience end to end, from the first sketch to production code. You decide what we build, how it looks and feels, and what "great" means for software that businesses trust to run their operations.
We're looking for someone with exceptional product intuition and outstanding design taste who can also ship the code. Strong candidates often span more than one of these:
Product-minded engineer: takes a vague customer problem to a shipped, polished product in days
Design engineer: turns rough ideas into interfaces that look and feel amazing, and builds them yourself
Founder-type builder: has built products from zero that people love, and knows what to cut to get there
What you'll do
Own the product experience end to end: what we build, how it works, how it looks and feels
Design and ship the interfaces through which businesses manage, trust and work alongside their AI agents
Ship end-to-end product for the first design partners, fast
Talk to customers directly and turn what you learn into product
Set the product and design bar as the team grows
What you bring
2 to 8 years of hands-on product or software engineering, with production products you built yourself
Outstanding design taste, with products to show that look and feel amazing (a portfolio, live products or side projects)
Zero-to-one experience: founder, technical co-founder, or a founding or very early engineer or designer at a high-growth startup
Strong enough engineering skills to ship production code yourself (e.g. TypeScript / React)
An unusually fast learner, with something distinctive on your profile (a product you built, a hard technical project, competition results, a top internship)
You use AI agents heavily in your own work and have opinions about the tools you build with
You want to build intensely: this is a 6-day, in-person team in San Francisco
Nice to have: early product or design engineering at a top AI-native or YC startup; experience designing AI or agent products (trust, transparency, human-in-the-loop UX); a strong CS, engineering or design degree
Working here
In person in San Francisco, 6 days a week, alongside the founder
Relocation supported; O-1 visa route for exceptional international candidates (a start in Vienna before moving to SF is possible)
Competitive SF base plus meaningful founding equity; co-founder-level equity for exceptional candidates
Process: intro call with the founder, portfolio / product deep-dive, technical interview, close