Founding Engineering Lead

About the Role

Lead engineering for an early-stage SaaS team building applied AI products for enterprise software. You will own architecture and technical direction while staying hands-on, partnering with company leadership on product and machine learning strategy.

What You'll Do

• Build and lead a pod of three to four engineers, supporting their growth, performance, and hiring while shipping critical work yourself.

• Own platform architecture and make build-versus-buy and infrastructure decisions.

• Set engineering standards for AI-assisted development, including review criteria, definition of done, release cadence, and on-call practices.

• Lead technical designs and initial implementations for new initiatives.

• Assess applied machine learning approaches and distinguish research that can support live systems from more speculative ideas.

• Partner with company leadership on product roadmap, model strategy, and machine learning direction.

What We're Looking For

• At least 5 years of engineering experience, ideally as a technical founder, founding engineer, staff-level individual contributor, or technical lead.

• Recent experience as the primary author of shipped software, with end-to-end ownership and minimal oversight.

• Experience leading engineers and setting technical standards, architecture, and infrastructure practices.

• Applied machine learning judgment, including classical methods, transformers, world models, and AI agents.

• Strong practical use of AI coding agents, comfort with ambiguity and inherited code, and a willingness to take on unglamorous work.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary range: $200,000 to $400,000 annually. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

On-site in New York City.