Founding Engineer

AI Talent Now


Job Location:

San Francisco, CA - USA

Monthly Salary: $ 150 - 200
Experience Required: 5years
Posted on: 30+ days ago
Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

AI Talent Now Job # ZR 84


This dynamic start up is building wearable AI co-pilots for industrial field workers deploying smart glasses powered by agentic vision-language models (VLMs) to legacy industries like data centers energy grids and aerospace. The company is on a mission to bring AI into environments where technologylet alone artificial intelligencehas never meaningfully helped before.

Founded by two French co-founders who have been best friends since age three this company combines deep expertise in mechanical engineering AI and robotics with a long-term vision for industrial automation. The company operates at the intersection of computer vision multimodal AI and wearable hardware collecting real-world data that can serve robotics automation down the line.


Culture: This company runs with the intensity of a top-tier YC-style startup. The team values hunger scrappiness and genuine mission alignment over pedigree. Engineers are expected to operate with high ownership move fast and iterate constantly as the AI landscape evolves. The founders prioritize people who are excited about computer vision and industrial applicationsnot just chasing the latest LLM trends. The work environment is collaborative in-person and high-tempo with a strong emphasis on shipping production systems to real customers.

With anchor accounts at world-leading data center and energy grid companies already on path to $10M ARR and 10-15 enterprise prospects in pipeline (including hyperscalers top aerospace primes and US Army) This company is solving one of the most interesting applied AI problems in the market today.


Why this company

  • Real Impact: Agentic VLM smart glasses already deployed with senior technicians at world-leading data center and energy grid customers. Two anchor accounts alone are on path to $10M ARR with 10-15 more enterprise prospects in pipeline (hyperscalers top aerospace primes US Army).

  • Differentiated Bet: Computer vision and agentic VLM grounded on bespoke integrations with legacy enterprise systems. Not battling foundation labs building the layer that actually makes AI work in industries where it has never shown up.

  • Strong Seed & Investors: $5M led by A* with deep operator network and Valor as strategic with direct XAI / data center introductions. Founder-led sales already converting.

  • Industrial Founders: French co-founder duo mechanical engineering AI computer vision research backgrounds. Built for industrial customers by people who think industrial.


Why this Role

  • Builder: Own the AI core orchestration evals and customer-facing data flywheel. Customer pull is already there; engineering is the bottleneck.

  • Founding-team scope: Exposure to GTM hiring and internal AI-native tooling alongside core engineering. Reports directly to the founder.

  • Comp: $150K-$200K base 2-3% equity (flex higher for exceptional).


Role Requirements: Founding Engineer
  • Full stack/AI engineering role with a focus on core model development and backend work.
  • Expected to multitask work on internal pipelines and develop customer-facing products.

Role Requirements: Full Stack Engineer
  • Focus on scalable system design working on apps and platforms optimizing for latency.
  • More backend-focused early on with potential for future frontend development.

Role Requirements: AI Engineer
  • Application-layer focus; model orchestration and smart evals are key tasks.
  • Requires computer vision and multimodal experience as a must-have.

Candidate Requirements
  • Founding Engineer: 0-3 years experience startup culture familiarity preferred.
  • Full Stack Engineer: 2-5 years experience mature decision-making skills needed.

Ideal Candidate Profile
  • For Founding Engineer: AI-focused hungry and startup-experienced.
  • For Full Stack Engineer: Scalable system design skills ideally video heavy experience.

Compensation and Logistics
  • Founding Engineer: $150-200K base 2-3% equity; Full Stack Engineer: $180-240K base 0.25-0.75% equity.
  • AI Engineer: Similar to Full Stack with flexibility based on experience.

Work Arrangement and Culture
  • Onsite role with flexibility for remote work on the sixth day.
  • Expected work hours are intense around 70-80 hours per week.



Requirements

Role Requirements: Founding Engineer
  • Full stack/AI engineering role with a focus on core model development and backend work.
  • Expected to multitask work on internal pipelines and develop customer-facing products.

Role Requirements: Full Stack Engineer
  • Focus on scalable system design working on apps and platforms optimizing for latency.
  • More backend-focused early on with potential for future frontend development.

Role Requirements: AI Engineer
  • Application-layer focus; model orchestration and smart evals are key tasks.
  • Requires computer vision and multimodal experience as a must-have.

Candidate Requirements
  • Founding Engineer: 0-3 years experience startup culture familiarity preferred.
  • Full Stack Engineer: 2-5 years experience mature decision-making skills needed.

Ideal Candidate Profile
  • For Founding Engineer: AI-focused hungry and startup-experienced.
  • For Full Stack Engineer: Scalable system design skills ideally video heavy experience.

Compensation and Logistics
  • Founding Engineer: $150-200K base 2-3% equity; Full Stack Engineer: $180-240K base 0.25-0.75% equity.
  • AI Engineer: Similar to Full Stack with flexibility based on experience.

Work Arrangement and Culture
  • Onsite role with flexibility for remote work on the sixth day.
  • Expected work hours are intense around 70-80 hours per week.

1 - 4 years of experience post-grad SWE (open to more if exceptional); early-stage startup exposure strongly preferred


Work experience

Founding engineer (#1-5) OR early startup experience that shipped OR intense-culture company (Tesla SpaceX Anduril top YC).

Updated

Experience deploying hardware-to-software integrations including wearables cameras robotics IoT or drones. Firmware authorship is a plus.

Updated

Big-company tenure (Meta Reality Labs Snap Apple Vision Google big streaming infra) is a BONUS only when on a directly-relevant team (AR/smart-glasses real-time video/streaming on-device/edge ML) OR paired with a builder signal (founder / early-startup / side projects / OSS). A long single big-tech tenure with no builder signal and no relevant-team work is a NEGATIVE.

Experience with video/audio streaming edge inference autonomous driving robotics or other low-latency systems.

Updated

Built or contributed to agentic AI / multimodal pipelines

Updated

Production AR/wearable AI or computer vision exposure

Updated

Education

Elite CS/Eng background OR demonstrated equivalent shipping record.

Updated

Grit proxies: olympiad medals USACO Platinum competitive programming rank or founded-while-studying.




Required Skills:

Docker Kubernetes Helm charts; can take ML/AI work into production


Required Education:

BS in CS math or physics

AI Talent Now Job # ZR 84This dynamic start up is building wearable AI co-pilots for industrial field workers deploying smart glasses powered by agentic vision-language models (VLMs) to legacy industries like data centers energy grids and aerospace. The company is on a mission to bring AI into envir...