Founding AI Engineer Jobs
Founding AI Engineer jobs are open across fintech, healthtech, enterprise SaaS, and defense tech, from early-career to staff and principal level, with specializations in LLM fine-tuning, MLOps infrastructure, and AI product development. See the openings below and apply to the ones that match your experience.
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You've shipped agents people rely on, and you care about both the infrastructure and the interface. Be the first engineer next to the founders.
A profitable seed-stage startup in San Francisco, run by two founders, builds a platform that works like an internal workforce: AI agents take over whole tasks, such as accounts receivable via Slack or scheduling via email, and teams build their own internal apps on top. Customers so far came through referrals. You'll work across infrastructure and product: agent infrastructure, memory, recommendations, long-running agent execution, internal apps and the user experience. Your first focus is making the agents more useful and reliable, with hundreds of thousands of traces a week to learn from.
They're hiring 2 founding engineers.
What you'll own
- Agent infrastructure, memory and long-running execution
- The product layer: internal apps and a polished user experience
- Reliability, backed by evals you trust
- Broad ownership with no day-to-day micromanagement
Must-haves
- Solid infrastructure skills, and as a generalist you've shipped both product features and platform work
- Production software that runs reliably at scale, ideally agents users depend on, backed by evaluations you believe in
- A standout signal: a strong engineering team, founder experience or a founder fellowship, or a competitive achievement in maths, programming, debate or games
- You can explain every project on your CV in technical depth
- 1+ year of experience
- Working from the San Francisco office five days a week, 9-9-5
Bonus points
- Memory or long-running execution for agents
- Polished, detail-oriented UI and UX work
- Customer-facing experience (calls, onboarding or support)
What's in it for you
- $150k–$300k base + 0.1–2% real founding equity
- The first engineer next to the founders of a profitable company
- No hour tracking, unlimited AI budget and lunch every day
- Visa sponsorship available
Good to know
- Full-time, on-site in San Francisco, 9-9-5 Process: founder conversation technical deep dive on a project from your CV a 2–4 day work trial or a 1–2 day take-home references
- offer
When you apply, please include
- Your CV (PDF), your LinkedIn URL, and GitHub or a portfolio if you have one
- An agent or AI workflow in production that people rely on, and the eval behind it
- Your current location, and confirmation that five days a week in San Francisco works for you
- Your visa or citizenship status
- Your base salary expectation, your notice period, and any other interview processes you're in
Does this sound like you? Apply now. If you're a match, we'll be in touch within 3 working days.
RnB Consultancy | Netherlands | 3604 AB Maarssen | KvK 71489703
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Find Founding AI Engineer JobsFounding AI Engineer Job Market
Who's Hiring
- RNB Consultancy14R
- Alldus3
- Wipro2
- Agentio2
- GLG Srl2
Top Industries Hiring
- Technology & Software
What Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in founding AI engineer jobs.
- Strong proficiency in Python and experience building production machine learning systems
- Hands-on experience with large language model fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment
- Familiarity with MLOps tooling and cloud infrastructure on AWS, GCP, or Azure
- Experience designing and maintaining data pipelines for model training and inference
- Ability to work independently and make architectural decisions with limited direction
- Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, machine learning, or a related field
Tips for Your Founding AI Engineer Job Search
Tailor your resume to founding-stage signals
Founding AI Engineer roles prioritize ownership over process. Highlight projects where you built systems from scratch, made architectural decisions independently, and shipped to production without a large team behind you. Generic ML resume bullets won't move the needle here.
Show your stack choices, not just skills
Early-stage teams want to know you can pick the right tool, not just use the tool they hand you. For each project on your resume, name the framework, model, and infrastructure you chose and briefly explain why you chose it over alternatives.
Apply early to roles that fit
Migrate Mate lists founding ai engineer openings from across the United States in one place, so you can find roles that match and apply directly to each listing.
Target companies at the right funding stage
Founding AI Engineer openings cluster at seed-to-Series B companies where the AI team is still under ten people. When you find a role that fits, check the company's funding stage so you can speak directly to what a first or second AI hire can build there.
Prepare a system-design answer for ambiguous problems
Founding-stage interviews almost always include an open-ended design prompt with no clear constraints. Practice walking through how you'd scope, prototype, and iterate on an AI feature when product requirements haven't been finalized and infrastructure doesn't exist yet.
Negotiate equity with the same care as base pay
At early-stage companies, equity terms vary far more than salary bands. Before your final conversation, understand the difference between cliff, vesting schedule, and strike price so you can ask specific questions and compare offers on a consistent basis.
Founding AI Engineer Jobs: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies are hiring the most founding ai engineers?
RNB Consultancy, Alldus, and Wipro are hiring the most founding ai engineers right now, with openings concentrated in California, New York, and Georgia, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of November 2026. Demand is highest at seed-to-Series B companies building AI-native products.
How many founding ai engineer jobs are remote?
About 67% of founding ai engineer openings are fully remote or hybrid as of November 2026, reflecting strong demand for independent contributors who don't need daily in-person collaboration. Infrastructure and LLM fine-tuning roles tend to offer the most remote flexibility, while roles requiring close product iteration often prefer on-site or hybrid arrangements.
How do you become a founding ai engineer?
Start by building end-to-end ML projects you've taken from raw data to deployed model on your own, since founding roles require full-stack ownership. Develop depth in at least one area such as LLM fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation, or ML infrastructure. Contribute to open-source AI projects to demonstrate you can ship without a team structure around you, and study how early-stage product teams scope and prioritize AI features.
Can you get a founding ai engineer job with little experience?
It's possible if you can demonstrate concrete technical output rather than years on a resume. Hiring teams at early-stage companies evaluate whether you've built and shipped an AI system independently, so a strong portfolio of personal or open-source projects, a detailed write-up of the architectural choices you made, and evidence you can operate without process or oversight will carry more weight than tenure at a large company.
What does the founding ai engineer interview process look like?
Expect a recruiter screen followed by a technical take-home or live coding exercise focused on ML implementation rather than classic algorithm problems. Most processes then include a system design round where you scope an AI feature from scratch, an architecture deep-dive on a past project you built independently, and a final conversation with a founder or CTO about how you make decisions under ambiguity and limited resources.
Where can I find and apply to founding ai engineer jobs?
You can find and apply to founding ai engineer jobs on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from across the United States in one place. Search the listings to find roles that match your background and apply directly to each one that fits.
See All 50 Founding AI Engineer Jobs
Find roles that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find Founding AI Engineer Jobs