What does a founding engineer typically earn?

Typical compensation for a founding engineer runs $130k–$220k base + 0.5%–2% equity. Salaries skew higher at well-funded US startups and lower outside the US; equity grants vary sharply by stage.

How many founding engineer jobs are remote-friendly?

Across the current 112 active listings on Jobs Base, 16 (14%) are fully remote. The rest split between on-site and hybrid.

How often are new founding engineer jobs posted?

Jobs Base ingests new founding engineer jobs continuously. New listings appear daily across the major sources we ingest.

Founding Engineer Jobs

Founding engineers are the first or second engineering hires at a venture-backed startup. The job is half "ship the product" and half "make every technical decision that the company will live with for the next five years." A typical week looks like: write the API, ship the dashboard, talk to two paying customers, fix the deploy pipeline, interview the next hire, decide whether to use Postgres or DynamoDB. There are no PMs, no QA team, no separate ops engineer. You absorb all of those roles until the company can afford to split them out.

112 active 14% remote median salary $220k

1.	Founding Engineer (Lance (YC W26)) San Francisco, California, United States \| $160,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| python, javascript, software development \| 3mo ago
2.	Founding Engineer ($170K - $250K + 0.5% - 1.5% Equity) at Healthcare AI startup backed by Scale AI Angels (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $170,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, cloud platforms \| 3mo ago
3.	Founding Engineer & CTO (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 3mo ago
4.	Founding Engineer & CTO (WealthyMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 3mo ago
5.	Founding Engineer, Apps (Starch) Brooklyn, New York, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, postgres \| 3mo ago
6.	Founding Engineer ($200K - $250K + Up to 1% Equity) at YC-backed AI GTM startup (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $200,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, next.js \| 4mo ago
7.	Founding Engineer - AI-Native (NeoRecruit) India \| remote \| full-time \| entry \| flutter, dart, react.js \| 4mo ago
8.	Founding Engineer (ryw) Houston, Texas, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| api design, async patterns, data modeling \| 4mo ago
9.	Founding Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) New York, New York, United States \| $170,000 – $185,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, django, typescript \| 4mo ago
10.	Founding Engineer (Neighborbrite) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| generative vision models, llm, next.js \| 4mo ago
11.	Founding Engineer \| Backend Infrastructure / AI Agents \| TypeScript \| Python \| Must have startup experience (Optimal) New York, New York, United States \| $150,000 – $225,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| backend infrastructure, sre, devops \| 4mo ago
12.	Founding Engineer (Vye Health) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| react, postgresql, aws \| 4mo ago
13.	Founding Engineer (Albert Bow) California, United States \| Up to $300,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, distributed systems, llm \| 4mo ago
14.	Founding Engineer (Nohi) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 4mo ago
15.	Founding Engineer - Robotics Data Infrastructure (Neural Motion) California, United States \| $150,000 – $220,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, go, distributed systems \| 4mo ago
16.	Founding Engineer (Letty) London, London, United Kingdom \| £80,000 – £120,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, fastapi, backend fundamentals \| 4mo ago
17.	Founding Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) United States \| $150,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| go, typescript, next.js \| 4mo ago
18.	Founding Engineer (Back-end) (Stealth Startup) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend engineering, apis, databases \| 4mo ago
19.	Founding Engineer - Staff Distributed Systems (Birdai Labs, Inc) United States \| remote \| full-time \| senior \| rust, c++, distributed systems \| 4mo ago
20.	Founding Engineer (AI startup-Remote) (CyberCoders) Seattle, Washington, United States \| $170,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, machine learning, aws \| 4mo ago
21.	Founding Engineer (Reval) New York, New York, United States \| $180,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, postgres \| 4mo ago
22.	Founding Engineer (Python, Typescript, React) (Trinity Consulting Group) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $180,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, react \| 4mo ago
23.	Founding Engineer (CoinBanker) United States \| remote \| part-time \| lead \| react native, react, node.js \| 4mo ago
24.	Founding Engineer (SF, On-site) (Caddie AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $180,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, react \| 4mo ago
25.	Founding AI Engineer (Part Time) - Prompt Engineering & LLM Applications (Y22 AI) United States \| remote \| full-time \| entry \| prompt engineering, llm applications, python \| 3mo ago
26.	Founding ML Engineer (TrueMile.AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| machine learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning \| 3mo ago
27.	Founding AI Engineer (LinkMD AI) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, llm, ai \| 3mo ago
28.	Founding AI Engineer (Kaelux) United States \| From $160,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| ai engineering, langgraph, n8n \| 3mo ago
29.	Founding AI Engineer (Raya Health) San Francisco, California, United States \| $100,000 – $120,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| openai models, anthropic models, fine-tuning \| 4mo ago
30.	Founding AI Engineer (Farsyt) Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| python, apis, databases \| 4mo ago
31.	Founding AI Engineer (Edelman Legal Consulting PLLC) New York, New York, United States \| hybrid \| contract \| lead \| ai, rag, llm \| 4mo ago
32.	Founding AI Engineer (Healthcare) (ReClym Health) United States+1 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| fastapi, react, next.js \| 4mo ago
33.	Founding ML Engineer – Search & Agents (Greylock Partners) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| software engineering, search systems, retrieval \| 4mo ago
34.	Founding AI Engineer (RDE Advisors, Inc.) New York, New York, United States \| $65,000 – $80,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| next.js 14, typescript, tailwind css \| 4mo ago
35.	Founding ML Engineer / Series A / NYC / $250k + Founding Equity (Open Talent) New York, New York, United States \| $250,000 – $500,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, pytorch, llms \| 4mo ago
36.	Founding CTO Engineer (iOS-First, Mobile Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| ios, swift, mobile development \| 4mo ago
37.	AI Founding Engineer (Supply Veins (Techstars '24)) California, United States+1 \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| neural networks, pattern recognition, natural language processing \| 3mo ago
38.	Founding AI/ML Engineer (Prismera) New York, New York, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| llm orchestration, retrieval infrastructure, document understanding \| 3mo ago
39.	Founding AI/ML Engineer / Startup / $500k+ / NYC (Open Talent) New York, United States \| $500,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| llms, rag, agentic systems \| 4mo ago
40.	Founding AI GTM Engineer (Grasply™) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, api integration, rest api \| 4mo ago
41.	Founding DevOps Engineer (Equity-Based – Pre-Funding Startup) (Orchestrator Technology Inc) Florida, United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, production systems \| 4mo ago
42.	Founding Senior Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, backend \| 4mo ago
43.	Founding Backend Engineer (Wingback Security) San Francisco Bay Area, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, go, typescript \| 3mo ago
44.	Founding Product Engineer (Phaselaw) New York City, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| next.js, react, tailwind \| 4mo ago
45.	Founding Backend Engineer (Phaselaw) New York City, New York, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| mid \| python, postgres, elasticsearch \| 4mo ago
46.	Founding Head of Engineering (AI) (Deploy IQ) United Kingdom \| remote \| full-time \| executive \| ai/ml, llms, agent systems \| 4mo ago
47.	Founding Product Engineer (Full Stack) (Portal (SPC F25)) California, United States \| $110,000 – $180,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend, distributed systems, infrastructure \| 4mo ago
48.	Founding Product Engineer (Mobile-First, React Native / Expo) — Dallas (Hybrid / Remote) (Frienzy Inc.) Dallas, Texas, United States \| hybrid \| contract \| lead \| react native, expo, react \| 4mo ago
49.	Founding AI / ML Engineer (Lume Security) Atlanta, Georgia, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, machine learning \| 4mo ago
50.	Founding Frontend Engineer (ASTA Health Tech) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| javascript, typescript, react \| 4mo ago

view all 112 results

Frequently asked questions

What is a founding engineer?: Founding engineers are the first or second engineering hires at a venture-backed startup. The job is half "ship the product" and half "make every technical decision that the company will live with for the next five years." A typical week looks like: write the API, ship the dashboard, talk to two paying customers, fix the deploy pipeline, interview the next hire, decide whether to use Postgres or DynamoDB. There are no PMs, no QA team, no separate ops engineer. You absorb all of those roles until the company can afford to split them out.
What does a founding engineer typically earn?: Typical compensation for a founding engineer runs $130k–$220k base + 0.5%–2% equity. Salaries skew higher at well-funded US startups and lower outside the US; equity grants vary sharply by stage.
How many founding engineer jobs are remote-friendly?: Across the current 112 active listings on Jobs Base, 16 (14%) are fully remote. The rest split between on-site and hybrid.
How often are new founding engineer jobs posted?: Jobs Base ingests new founding engineer jobs continuously. New listings appear daily across the major sources we ingest.