Founding Engineer

Evan is a bottleneck on backend systems as he takes on more non-IC work. Engineering today is Evan plus one founding engineer, so this hire is the third engineer. The goal is to fully hand off parts of the backend within two to three months. The company’s edge is speed: getting product into customers’ hands, taking the feedback, and shipping again. The last engineer who didn’t work out failed on exactly that.

Day to day, this person owns backend and systems work for a platform that runs and measures coding-agent sessions at scale, so the work involves agent sandboxes, AI gateways, and infrastructure for running experiments. The single most important spike is zero-to-one systems ownership plus a fast customer loop. They need to have built real backend systems from scratch, be able to explain why each decision was made, and ship to customers quickly instead of polishing.

What You’ll Own / Do

• Take full ownership of core backend systems within the first two to three months
• Build and scale the infrastructure that runs coding-agent sessions across harnesses (sandboxes, gateways, orchestration)
• Ship features straight to customers, collect feedback, and iterate within days, not weeks
• Make technical calls on your own and defend them at the weekly team round table
• Take load off Evan so engineering stops depending on him

Requirements

Technical

• Strong backend and distributed-systems fundamentals
• Has designed and built production systems from zero to one
• Familiarity with agent sandboxes, AI gateways, or agent infrastructure (strongly preferred; this is what makes someone effective from day one)
• Infrastructure: AWS, networking fundamentals, containers/sandboxes
• Databases: Postgres, ClickHouse
• Web stack: TypeScript, Next.js/React, Python/Django

Execution & Ownership

• Track record of high autonomy: makes calls without waiting for direction
• Ships fast and stays tied to customer impact; doesn’t sit on projects or build things nobody asked for
• Communicates technical reasoning clearly in fluent spoken and written English.
• Evan needs to explain something once and have the person run with it.

Background

• 3+ years of experience, 5+ preferred
• Has worked at a fast-growing Seed or Series A startup (must-have)
• Currently in or wants a full-time hands-on IC role.
• Most recent role at a startup, not a big company

Location & Visa

• In person 5 days a week at the Presidio, SF.
• SF-local candidates are strongly preferred because the process is one screen plus an on-site.
• Must be authorized to work in the US.
• Evan is open to transferring an existing visa or similarly quick cases if there are no material fees or delays.

Nice-to-Have

• Founding engineer more than once
• Currently at an agent-infrastructure company (E2B, Daytona, Modal, AgentCard, AgentMail)
• Exposure to developer tools or coding-agent ecosystems

Who Will Thrive Here

• Someone intense who wants to prove something and takes personal pride in their work.
• They push back on too much direction, have firm opinions and can argue for them in a best-idea-wins round table, but change their mind when they hear a better argument.
• They would rather ship a rough version to a customer today than a polished one next month.