Founding Engineer ($150K-$250K + Equity) Building AI Systems for Manufacturing

About the jobJob Title: Founding Engineer (AI Systems)Salary: $150K-$250K base + competitive equityLocation: San Francisco, CA (6 days in-office)Visa sponsorship and relocation support availableCompany DescriptionVenture-backed startup building the decision intelligence layer for industrial operations.Manufacturing companies still rely on human operators to make thousands of operational decisions every day. Planning production, allocating resources, managing constraints, and responding to changing conditions often happens through spreadsheets, tribal knowledge, and manual processes.This company is building a new class of AI systems that combine agentic reasoning, simulation, and mathematical optimization to automate those decisions at scale. Backed by top-tier investors and already delivering millions of dollars in value for customers, they're building what comes after traditional ERP software.Job DescriptionJoin a small, highly technical team building intelligent systems that automate complex decision-making for manufacturers and industrial companies.As a Founding Engineer, you'll work across backend systems, infrastructure, data-intensive workflows, and AI-powered decision engines. You'll help build systems that combine large-scale industrial data, agent-based reasoning, optimization algorithms, and simulation to solve operational problems that were previously managed by experienced human operators.This is a highly product-oriented engineering role. You'll work directly with customers, ship production systems end-to-end, and help shape both the technical architecture and product direction of the company.Why this role is remarkableWork on genuinely difficult engineering problems at the intersection of AI agents, optimization, simulation, and large-scale industrial systemsBuild alongside a talent-dense team with backgrounds spanning startups, robotics, aerospace, and world-class engineering organizationsHelp redefine an industry that has seen little fundamental software innovation in decades, with enormous market potential and immediate customer impactWhat you will doDesign and build backend systems, APIs, orchestration layers, and data infrastructure powering AI-driven decision enginesDevelop production-grade agentic workflows that combine reasoning, optimization, and operational data to automate complex business decisionsWork directly with customers to understand operational challenges, gather feedback, and rapidly ship solutions that deliver measurable valueContribute across the stack when needed, including frontend features, infrastructure, deployment systems, and product architectureThe ideal candidate3 to 8 years of software engineering experience, ideally at high-growth startups or exceptionally demanding technical environmentsStrong backend engineering skills in Python, with experience building production systems that operate at scaleComfortable owning features end-to-end, from architecture and implementation through deployment and customer feedbackExperience with cloud infrastructure, containerization, databases, and modern developer toolingStrong product instincts and a genuine desire to understand customer problems rather than simply execute ticketsBuilder mentality with evidence of ownership, whether through startup experience, side projects, open-source work, research, or previous founding experienceBonus pointsExperience building agentic systems, AI products, orchestration frameworks, or decision-support systemsFamiliarity with optimization, simulation, operations research, or industrial workflowsExperience working in highly technical startup environments such as Palantir, Tesla, Nvidia, Applied Intuition, Retool, or similar organizationsNext stepsApply via this LinkedIn job postWe will review and reach out if there is a strong matchIf aligned, we will introduce you directly to the founding teamIf this role is not the right fit, we may suggest and make introductions to other high-signal startup opportunities we are actively recruiting for, always with your permissionA quick note on authenticityThis is a real, active role we are supporting in close partnership with the hiring team. We do not post speculative roles and work directly with founders on their actual hiring needs.