This Founding Engineer role in New York City puts you at the very start of an AI-native company, owning core systems from day one. As the Founding Engineer, you will shape the architecture, the stack and the engineering culture.
📍 New York City — Where Your Career Takes Flight
Most startups talk about building the future of AI. This team is building the infrastructure that makes AI reliable.
Backed by a multi-million dollar pre-seed round and already working with active design partners, they’re looking for one of their first engineering hires to help shape the product, culture and technical direction from day one.
This isn’t a role where you’ll spend months refining internal systems or sitting behind a Jira board. You’ll talk directly to customers, identify problems worth solving, build solutions, ship them to production and see the impact immediately.
If your long-term goal is to start a company, become a technical founder, or learn how elite early-stage teams operate, this is the type of opportunity that rarely comes along.
Manhattan from above
New York City at night
🚀 What You’ll Do as a Founding Engineer
- Building product end-to-end from idea through production
- Working directly with founders and design partners
- Shipping customer-facing features at high velocity
- Building backend systems and platform infrastructure
- Influencing product direction through direct customer feedback
- Solving complex technical problems in an AI-first environment
- Helping define engineering culture as one of the earliest hires
🎯 What They Want in a Founding Engineer
- 1–5 years of software engineering experience, or an exceptional recent graduate from a top university
- Strong full-stack engineering skills with a backend bias
- Production experience shipping real products used by customers
- AI-native mindset and daily use of tools such as Claude, Cursor or similar
- Strong product instincts and comfort operating in ambiguity
- Excellent communication skills and willingness to work directly with customers
- High ownership, high agency and a genuine desire to learn quickly
New York City — Central Park from above
⚡ Strong Signals
- Founder or founding engineer experience
- Side projects, open-source contributions or products you’ve shipped independently
- Experience at high-bar engineering organisations or ambitious startups
- Evidence of rapid career growth and intentional career decisions
- Clear motivation for joining a pre-seed company
- Strong academic background from a leading university
❌ Not The Right Fit If
- You prefer highly structured environments and clearly defined requirements
- You’re applying to every startup regardless of stage or mission
- You’ve changed jobs frequently without clear reasoning
- You aren’t excited about working closely with customers
- You aren’t willing to work in-person with a highly collaborative team
💰 What’s On Offer
The city that never sleeps — join us in New York
This is a rare opportunity to join a well-funded startup at the earliest stage, work directly alongside experienced founders, and have an outsized impact on both the product and the business.
Photos courtesy of Unsplash (Unsplash License) | Posted by Big Wave Digital
Why this Founding Engineer role stands out
A Founding Engineer seat at an AI-native company is rare. You are not maintaining someone else’s decisions; you are making the foundational ones. You will choose the languages, frameworks and patterns the next ten engineers inherit, and you will see your work go straight into production. With relocation support to New York City, meaningful equity and a salary band of US$160k–$260k, this is built for an engineer who wants real ownership and real upside.
Apply through Big Wave Digital
Big Wave Digital partners directly with this team, so your application is reviewed by people who understand both the technology and the opportunity. We have placed engineers into high-growth, AI-first companies before, and we will give you honest guidance through every stage. If you are an engineer ready to step up and own the stack, this is a standout chance to make the leap. Explore more technology roles at Big Wave Digital and apply now to take the next step.
