Founding Engineer

Job Description

### About the Role

This is a core infrastructure role at a seed-stage graph database company building the memory and context layer for AI agents. You'll join a small, high-conviction engineering team owning the hardest parts of the stack --- query execution, graph storage internals, and distributed systems --- and make architecture decisions that shape the product for the next decade. It's a direct-impact position: your name will be on the design docs and the pull requests in the same week.

### What You'll Do

* Own and ship core infrastructure components including the query engine, graph storage layer, and distributed systems.

* Drive architecture decisions with long-term product impact alongside the founding team.

* Contribute to benchmark and research work that defines the technical category.

* Participate in architecture reviews and make hard technical trade-offs with real production consequences.

* Help raise the technical ceiling and shape engineering culture as the team scales.

### What We're Looking For

* 3 years of relevant engineering experience with strong CS fundamentals --- the kind built on first principles, not just frameworks.

* Proficiency in **Rust or Go**, or a demonstrated drive to go deep in systems-level languages.

* Hands-on experience designing and shipping distributed systems, databases, or storage infrastructure in production environments.

* Proven ability to own large, ambiguous problems without a defined playbook.

* Track record of shipping production systems that real customers depend on under load.

* Open source contributions in systems-level projects are a strong plus.

* Prior founding engineer or early-stage infrastructure experience is a plus.

### Compensation \& Benefits

Salary range: **$160,000 -- $270,000 USD annually** , plus meaningful equity. Additional benefits include a learning budget, flexible PTO, wellness programs, and a gear/software stipend. **Visa sponsorship is not available.**

### Location

**On-site** in San Francisco, CA, United States.