Founding Engineer

Stealth Startup | Founding Engineer | NYC (in-person 5x/week) | Full-Time The mission We’re building a best-in-class multi-modal AI agent product (voice + SMS + email) with the potential to disrupt deeply entrenched software businesses and unify a fragmented industry. We’re a tiny team with real traction pre-product, moving fast, and we care obsessively about craft. Why this role This is a founding engineering seat: you’ll be an early builder shaping the product, architecture, and quality bar from day one. In the first 3–6 months, the role is highly IC-focused. As we scale (including our first in-person hub/site and new hires), this role has optionality (i.e., growing into a leadership role or staying on the IC track and owning the engineering roadmap) for the right person. What you’ll do Build real-time systems for voice (streaming audio, low latency, turn-taking), SMS, and email automation with robust state + memory. Design the foundation: architecture, data model, reliability, observability, deployment, and developer velocity. Set the quality bar: clean code, pragmatic abstractions, testing strategy, “don’t break prod,” and thoughtful product UX. Partner closely with the co-founders on product decisions. You’ll have real influence over what we build and how it feels + how it's designed. What we’re looking for You should be able to work anywhere in the stack (frontend, backend, infra, integrations) and you know how to make smart tradeoffs. Strong product sense: you’re obsessive about confusing UI and you want to make workflows feel magical. Systems thinking: you can design for latency, reliability, and iteration speed (especially for real-time voice + agent state). High ownership: you run toward ambiguity, unblock yourself, and care deeply about outcomes. Startup mindset: high-risk/high-reward energy, low ego, high pace. Bonus points: Experience with agentic systems: LLM orchestration, tool calling, RAG, evals, prompt/versioning, guardrails. Voice/telephony or streaming experience (WebSockets/WebRTC, audio pipelines, turn detection). Messaging + deliverability experience (SMS workflows, email sending, compliance/opt-in, bounce handling). Familiarity with modern stacks (examples): TypeScript/Node, Python, React/Next.js, Postgres, Redis, queues, Docker, AWS/GCP, observability.