Not motivated by the fast-paced or high-ownership environment we offer; expressed preference for a more structured, routine role.
Experience did not stand out as particularly strong or differentiated.
Experience did not stand out as particularly strong or differentiated.
Hesitation is that the resume doesn't have the standout signal the founders have been consistently responding to recently. While the experience in data labeling/AI-adjacent companies is relevant, I don't think it will be perceived the same way as core product engineering experience.
Resume did not demonstrate standout achievements or unique qualifications relevant to the role.
Tweets, press, and people that show why this team is worth your time.
Proximitty is hiring three Founding Engineers. This person owns product and engineering end-to-end while also traveling roughly once a month around the country to speak directly with customers.
The mandate is to take Proximitty's 8 active pilots and make the product solid enough to convert them to 7-figure ARR contracts. The immediate priority is owning one agent end-to-end — the borrower portal experience as the first surface, including computer vision models that parse financial statements and reconcile discrepancies across statements in real time. If a borrower uploads a bunch of financial statements, the biggest challenge isn't parsing the statement itself — it's the cross-statement discrepancies. That's complicated to build.
They are really looking for a superstar — ex-founder, somebody with founding experience, somebody who's super learns quickly, doesn't have to be a domain expert, and somebody who speaks to customers. The hire is the third founder in spirit.
What You'll Own
Month 1
- Become a commercial real estate lending domain expert from zero
- Own one agent end-to-end — most likely the borrower portal experience, including computer vision parsing of financial statements + real-time cross-statement discrepancy reconciliation
- Start traveling to customer sites
Month 3
- Ship minimum production-viable software with the co-founders that enables scale from $1M to $10M ARR — the complete feature set scoped for the active pilot customers
- Forward-deploy with customers on the live deployments
Month 6
- Take the product from "decent first version" to "10x better than market" to "50-100x better than market"
- The architectural translation: take the nuances and assumptions of how banks underwrite different industries (healthcare, manufacturing, CRE) and translate them into the best-performing commercial underwriting agents in the industry
Requirements
- 2-6 years of professional engineering experience (sweet spot 2-5)
- Startup experience is compulsory
- Infrastructure / backend experience
- Raw intelligence and sharpness
- Learns quickly — has demonstrated learning something complex in a short period of time
- Speaks to customers comfortably — this is a customer-facing engineering seat, not a heads-down IC role
- Available to travel ~1x/month around the country to customer sites
- San Francisco-based or willing to relocate
- Available for 9-9-6 in-person default
Profile Tier 1 — Former Founders, especially YC Critical nuance: must be a former founder of a company that grew well. A failed founder of a flat company is not impressive.
Tier 2 — Competitive Winners Math Olympiad medalists, ICPC / IOI finalists, competitive gaming pros, comparable competitive-achievement signals
Tier 3 — Fintech Engineers Ramp, Mercury, Brex, Slope — high-quality fintech engineering Forward-deployed engineers from Palantir are an exceptional fit Any company that does forward-deployed engineering work is a huge plus Avoid pure bank engineers
Strong Bonuses
- Side projects / open repos that demonstrate range
- Public artifacts: GitHub stars, blog posts, OSS contributions, conference talks
- CV / computer vision background — direct match for the financial statement parsing surface
- Document AI / OCR / form extraction background (Sensible, Mindee, Hyperscience, Instabase alumni, or comparable)
- MCP server / agent infrastructure experience — direct match with Zi's CTO background
- Compliance / regulated industry software experience (fintech, healthcare, govtech)
- Spanish, Mandarin, or other languages — not required but useful given the customer travel
Location and Visa
- San Francisco-based or willing to relocate
- 9-9-6 in-person default — Saturdays flexible / optional remote 2- 4/7 on-call expectation with travel ~1x/month
- Visa sponsorship open
Who Will Thrive Here
- Ex-YC founder whose company grew but didn't reach Series A, ready for another swing as a founding engineer
- Math / programming competition champion who has the grind muscle and now wants to apply it to a real business
- Palantir forward-deployed engineer who's tired of large-company politics and wants the customer-engineering hybrid at startup scale
- Ramp / Mercury / Brex early engineer with real fintech depth and craving the founding-team energy
- Wants the cross-functional intensity of being a founder without taking on the fundraising load
- Loves the math: $3T market, $25K per loan in cost, $8K-$12K of that as the value capture, 8 pilots converting at 7-figure ARR — the unit economics are real
- Excited to travel monthly and talk to bankers in person
- Values founder-level health emphasis — this is not a 996-grind-into-the-ground culture