Founding Engineer

Role details

ABOUT THE ROLE This is the first engineering hire at an early-stage AI company building systems that make hardware engineering move at the speed of software. You'll partner directly with the co-founder and CTO to own the full technical stack — from architecture through production — and your work will directly shape how defense and medical device companies ship products faster. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Design and build the core architecture that integrates AI agents with CAD, CAE, and PLM tools, while meeting the security requirements of defense and medical customers. - Own end-to-end engineering execution: design decisions, production delivery, observability, eval suites, regression testing, and on-call operations. - Ship your first production AI workflow into a live customer program — one that engineers use weekly and depend on daily. - Build evaluation and training loops that improve the system from simulation runs, test data, engineer corrections, and field outcomes, including reinforcement learning grounded in real physics. - Sit alongside engineers at partner companies, identify where the system fails under real deadlines, and convert those learnings into platform capabilities. - Contribute to roadmap decisions and execute on them reliably inside active engineering programs. - Scale the platform across multiple operating companies and help build and mentor the small team that follows you. WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR - 4+ years shipping software in production, including systems that real customers depended on daily. - Proven track record deploying LLM agent workflows that call real tools, handle failure gracefully, and are held to rigorous eval suites. - Strong Python and backend or ML systems engineering skills; comfort picking the right tool for the job. - Hands-on experience with observability, evaluation frameworks, regression testing, and on-call operations for production AI systems. - Ability to design and honestly judge evaluations — knowing when to reach for retrieval, fine-tuning, RL, or plain software. - Excellent communicator who can earn trust on a shop floor and absorb domain expertise from experienced engineers. - Comfortable with regular travel to partner facilities and working in-person in New York City. - Nice to have: experience with CAD, CAE, EDA, or PLM tools; background in frontier AI, robotics, autonomous systems, or industrial software; prior RL or fine-tuning in production. COMPENSATION & BENEFITS - Salary: $150,000 – $220,000 USD annually - Visa sponsorship is not available for this role. LOCATION Full-time, on-site in New York City, NY. Regular travel to partner engineering sites is expected.