Clera

Founding Engineer

San Francisco
Salary
$150,000 - $250,000 annually
Level
Mid
Work type
On-site · San Francisco

Not stated in the posting: visa.

Open. First seen 31 October 2026.

Apply on the company's site →

About the role

About the Role

Join an early-stage AI company as its first engineering hire, working directly with the founder in San Francisco. You will evolve a working AI workforce product into reliable infrastructure designed to scale, with the opportunity to grow into a CTO role as the work and team develop.

What You'll Do

  • Rebuild the product foundation to support substantial user growth and production workloads.
  • Design and operate the agent runtime, including orchestration, memory, verification, and reliability systems.
  • Own technical work across backend, infrastructure, frontend, and agent systems, as company needs evolve.
  • Set the technical architecture, stack, engineering standards, and development practices.
  • Ship improvements weekly to customers using the product in live service businesses.

What We're Looking For

  • At least two years shipping production software, or an equivalent record as a founder or solo builder; exceptional early-career engineers are also considered.
  • Full-stack range, with the ability to work from backend and infrastructure through product UI.
  • Experience building and operating LLM or AI agent systems used by real customers, not demo-only projects.
  • Experience turning prototypes into production infrastructure, including architecture, data models, runtimes, and orchestration.
  • Evidence of owning technical decisions in a small or early-stage team, and shipping to production users weekly or faster.
  • Useful experience includes agent orchestration, memory, evaluations, verification, multi-agent workflows, or software for recruiting, agencies, and other service businesses.
  • Strong technical fundamentals and the ability to explain the difficult parts of systems you have built.

Compensation & Benefits

Base salary is $150,000 to $250,000 USD annually, plus meaningful founding equity. Visa sponsorship and relocation support are available.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, California. The founding team works together in person.

The team: Engineering HIRES STEADILY

This role is one of 206 open in Engineering. 140 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in March: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.

WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS

LLM (99 of 206), TypeScript (90 of 206), Python (87 of 206), React (76 of 206), Machine Learning (48 of 206), JavaScript (37 of 206), PostgreSQL (36 of 206)

OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM

From the team and dates on Clera's own job board.

Posting history

Reposted 3 times since 9 September 2026: a posting for this role in San Francisco was taken down and the role was posted again.

Salary context

49 other open postings titled Founding Engineer state a salary: median USD 160,000 to USD 250,000 a year.

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