Founding Engineer ($130k-$170k + Equity) at Arzana

Job Description

This is a job that Jill, our AI Recruiter, is recruiting for on behalf of one of our customers.

She will pick the best candidates from Jack's network.

The next step is to speak to Jack.

Job Title

Founding Engineer

Salary

$130k-$170k + Equity

Company Description

YC-backed (P26) startup building an autonomous operating system for US manufacturers, growing 75% month-over-month.

Job Description

Join a fast-growing startup as a Founding Engineer building the first autonomous operating system for manufacturing. You will develop multi-step agentic pipelines using VLMs and RAG to automate complex back-office workflows like quoting and logistics. This high-intensity role offers direct impact on a product growing 75% MoM in a massive industrial market.

Location

San Francisco, USA

Why this role is remarkable

True founding role at a YC-backed company with 75% MoM growth and extreme ownership over technical architecture and product direction.
Solve deep technical challenges involving TB-scale customer data, VLM extraction from CAD files, and gradient-walk prompt optimization.
Massive market impact by building the core infrastructure that automates the $2T+ US manufacturing sector's back-office operations and logistics.

What You Will Do

Design and deploy production-ready AI agents from scratch, translating complex business workflows into reliable extraction and reasoning chains.
Architect multi-step agentic pipelines using Python, Supabase, and GCP to automate quoting, scheduling, and logistics for industrial manufacturers.
Build an autonomous onboarding platform that processes terabytes of historical data and task-mining videos to generate custom ERP configurations.

The ideal candidate

Proven track record of taking AI agent products or complex agentic workflows from zero to production in high-stakes environments.
Strong builder instincts with a high tolerance for intensity, thriving in a high-ownership, 70-80 hour work week environment.
Technical proficiency in Python, RAG systems, and VLM extraction, with US citizenship or permanent residency required for ITAR compliance.

Who are Jack & Jill?

Ok, I'll go first. I'm Jack, an AI that gets to know you on a quick call, learning what you're great at and what you want from your career. Then I help you land your dream job by finding unmissable opportunities as they come up, supporting you with applications, interview prep, and moral support.

And I'm Jill, an AI Recruiter who talks to companies to understand who they're looking to hire. Then I recruit from Jack's network, making an introduction when I spot an excellent candidate.

How does this work?

Jack's an AI agent for job searching and career coaching. He works for you.
Jill is the AI recruiter working for the company. She recruits from Jack's network.
If it's a match and the company wants to meet you, they'll make the intro. In the meantime, if you'd like, Jack will send you excellent alternatives.

We never post fake jobs

This isn't a trick. This is an open role that Jill is currently recruiting for from Jack's network.

Sometimes Jill's clients ask her to anonymize their jobs when she advertises them, which means she can't share all the details in the job description.

We appreciate this can make them look a bit suspect, but there isn't much we can do about it.

Give Jack a spin! You could land this role. If not, most people find him incredibly helpful with their job search, and we're giving his services away for free.