Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer, Applied AI Platform | YC-backed AI security startup, trusted across the Fortune 50 | San Francisco, onsite | $130,000 to $180,000 base plus founding equityEvery enterprise wants to adopt AI. The ones that can't move are in the industries that matter most: healthcare, finance, insurance, law and manufacturing. They can't safely deploy what they don't understand, so they stall.We've partnered with a YC-backed startup that fixes this. Their platform assesses the risk of every third-party AI vendor a company touches, puts the right controls in place, and keeps monitoring those systems as they change, so the most regulated enterprises can adopt AI with confidence. It's already trusted across the Fortune 50 and by a large share of the world's biggest law firms, has scaled to millions in recurring revenue quickly, and was last valued in nine figures. It was built by engineers who came out of security and infrastructure at large consumer platforms, one of whom has already founded and sold a company. Twelve people today, heading to twenty.This is a founding engineering seat with total ownership. You'll build the platform end to end for real enterprise customers, not prototypes, taking products from 0 to 1 with full autonomy over the outcome, architecting the LLM systems and data models underneath them, and working directly with go-to-market and customers with no translation layer in between. It's a small, senior team that measures output and ownership rather than hours. If you like shipping fast, owning the whole problem and seeing your work reach customers quickly, you'll feel at home.The roleBuild LLM systems end to end: architect and ship agentic workflows and RAG pipelines in production for enterprise customers.Own the data layer: design the relational schemas and scalable pipelines the platform runs on.Take products 0 to 1, owning features and products outright with full autonomy over the outcome.Work directly with customers: collaborate with go-to-market and get on customer calls when it moves the product forward.Turn what Fortune 50 accounts tell you into fast, continuous improvements to the platform.What you needYou've built an LLM system end to end in production. Agentic workflows or RAG pipelines with real tool integrations, not demos.Strong relational database skills. You can design the data layer a real product runs on.You're based in San Francisco or willing to relocate, and happy onsite five days a week.You're already authorised to work in the US, or eligible for a letter-only visa such as TN or E-3 (Canadian, Australian or other Anglosphere). The company cannot sponsor anything requiring an employer petition, so H-1B is not an option here.What will stand outGenuine 0-to-1 or founder experience. You've owned whole product delivery rather than contributed code inside a large team.A mix of startup and big tech, with a scrappy, entrepreneurial streak.Strong product intuition and a track record of working well with customer-facing teams.You can hold your own on a customer call and explain a technical decision in terms of what it does for the business.They're hiring two or three founding engineers and moving quickly. If you want to own products end to end at a company helping the most sensitive industries adopt AI securely, apply here or send your CV to will@inventurerecruitment.com.