Share this job
Founding Engineer
San Francisco, CA
Apply for this job
  • Location: San Francisco, CA
  • Employment: Full-Time
  • Salary Range: $160,000 - $200,000 / per year
  • Work Type: In-person
  • Experience: 1.5 - 5 Years


Job Description


About the Company


The company is the AI SEO platform that helps retail and e-commerce brands win at ChatGPT Shopping. As AI replaces traditional search, the platform gives brands the tools to track how their products appear across AI engines, optimize product data and on-site content for AI recommendations, and enable instant checkout directly inside ChatGPT through OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol. 6 live brand customers, 12 new brand meetings booked per week. Backed by Y Combinator. Founded by a former engineering manager at Scale AI, where he built product data pipelines for Walmart, Coupang, Shopify, and large marketplaces. 2.5 years of runway even after these two hires.


About the Role


The company is looking for a Founding Engineer to help shape both the product and the company from an early stage. This is engineer number one. You are not joining a team. You are helping build one. This is a high-ownership role. You will help decide what gets built, how it gets built, what gets prioritized, and how the product moves as the market evolves. The right person is excited about adapting to every new change because this market is moving fast, and nobody, not even the model labs, has fully figured it out yet. That ambiguity is the opportunity.


  • Build incrementality and attribution systems tied to revenue outcomes for ecommerce brands.
  • Scale browser orchestration and retrieval infrastructure across AI commerce surfaces.
  • Make core workflows reliable with better queues, retries, and observability.
  • Adapt the product to emerging agentic commerce protocols and new platform launches.
  • Build AI agents, MCP servers, and new product surfaces across emerging verticals.


What You'll Own


  • Own the full stack from frontend to backend, shipping wherever the highest-leverage problem lives.
  • Help decide what gets built, how it gets built, and what gets prioritized as the market evolves.
  • Work in tight feedback loops with customers to translate product needs into shipped features.
  • Build and maintain reliable production systems with retries, observability, and workflow orchestration.
  • Shape the engineering culture and architecture of the company from day one.



Must-Have

  • Last role at a Series A, Series B, or a known fast-moving company. Clear evidence of operating at startup speed and knowing what they are stepping into. Has had a taste of what it means to move fast.
  • Top 50 school background preferred. Not a hard requirement, but a meaningful signal.
  • Has worked on AI agents or built agent-based systems in any capacity. Ecommerce or commerce background is an additional bonus, but not required.
  • Strong full-stack experience in TypeScript, Node.js, Express, React, and Next.js. Ships across the stack independently without needing others on either side.
  • High agency and high schlep tolerance. Resilient through changing priorities and mini-pivots, brings new ideas constantly, and prioritizes at a granular level without being managed. Gets excited by ownership and wearing multiple hats.


Nice-to-Have


  • Postgres, Redis, queues, and async job systems.
  • Browser automation, scraping, or retrieval infrastructure.
  • Building reliable production systems with retries, observability, and workflow orchestration.
  • Building AI agents, including context management, orchestration, and evals.
  • MCP servers, internal developer tools, or workflow products.
  • Ecommerce, retail infrastructure, search, attribution, or analytics systems.
  • Building codebases and products that work well with agents.


Requirements Summary


  • 1.5 to 5 years software engineering at a high-signal company.
  • TypeScript and Node.js proficiency.
  • AI agent and LLM API experience in production.
  • Full-stack product development capability.
  • Founding engineer mindset, high agency and high ownership.
  • In-person San Francisco.


Benefits & Perks


  • Unlimited PTO
  • 401K
  • Lunch
  • Company Laptop
  • Health Insurance
  • Bay Club gym membership


Interview Process


  1. Quick Call with CEO
  2. Take-home Assignment
  3. One to two-day work trial
  4. Offer Extended
  5. Hired


Apply for this job
Website Contact Us Linkedin
© 2026 FitNext Consulting. All rights reserved.