Overview
About the Role Join a well-funded (Series A/B), stealth-stage consumer tech startup building an AI-powered map and social discovery platform. The product helps people figure out where to go and what to do — combining one of the largest structured indices of real-world places and events with a clever, social product experience. As a Founding Engineer, you'll own problems end-to-end, work directly with founders, and make architectural decisions that shape the core system. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role for someone who thrives in ambiguity and moves fast. What You'll Work On Search and ranking at massive scale (200M+ places, millions of events) Recommendations and personalization of places and events using embeddings, structured data, and social signals Real-time infrastructure — chat, presence, and location systems that feel instantaneous AI agent pipelines that plan, retrieve,
Full job description
Full Job Description
About the Role
Join a well-funded (Series A/B), stealth-stage consumer tech startup building an AI-powered map and social discovery platform. The product helps people figure out where to go and what to do — combining one of the largest structured indices of real-world places and events with a clever, social product experience.
As a Founding Engineer, you'll own problems end-to-end, work directly with founders, and make architectural decisions that shape the core system. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role for someone who thrives in ambiguity and moves fast.
What You'll Work On
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Search and ranking at massive scale (200M+ places, millions of events)
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Recommendations and personalization of places and events using embeddings, structured data, and social signals
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Real-time infrastructure — chat, presence, and location systems that feel instantaneous
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AI agent pipelines that plan, retrieve, and reason over diverse data sources
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Map display algorithms that determine what deserves attention
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Data pipelines that structure large volumes of unstructured web data for novel product experiences
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Pushing Elasticsearch and vector search to sub-100ms latency across large datasets
Engineering Tracks
You don't need to fit neatly into one area — most people here won't.
Application Engineer (Full-Stack)
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Build fast, expressive interfaces across mobile and web
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Own features end-to-end from UI to backend
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Tools: TypeScript, React, React Native, iOS/Android
Data / AI Engineer
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Build the intelligence layer — search, ranking, pipelines, and agent systems
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Design systems that operate over large-scale, messy real-world data
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Tools: Python, TypeScript, Elasticsearch, Snowflake, LLMs, embeddings, retrieval and recommendation systems
What We're Looking For
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0–5 years of professional software engineering experience
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Proven experience building real-time or low-latency production systems
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Proficiency in search, ranking algorithms, and related infrastructure
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Experience with data processing pipelines, ML/AI workflows, or data engineering
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Track record of infrastructure and performance optimization at scale
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Prior experience at early-stage startups; comfortable operating with high ambiguity
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Ability to own features end-to-end with cross-functional collaboration (product, design, engineering)
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Strong problem-solving and fast decision-making in fast-paced environments
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You care about how something feels, not just whether it works
Compensation & Benefits
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Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually
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Equity as a founding team member
Location
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San Francisco, CA — on-site required
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Candidates must be located in or willing to relocate to San Francisco
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No visa sponsorship available — must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship
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Verification notes
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