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 118 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.

118 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 \| 2mo 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 \| 2mo ago
3.	Founding Engineer & CTO (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 2mo ago
4.	Founding Engineer & CTO (WealthyMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 2mo ago
5.	Founding Engineer, Apps (Starch) Brooklyn, New York, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, postgres \| 2mo 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 \| 2mo ago
7.	Founding Engineer - AI-Native (NeoRecruit) India \| remote \| full-time \| entry \| flutter, dart, react.js \| 3mo ago
8.	Founding Engineer (ryw) Houston, Texas, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| api design, async patterns, data modeling \| 3mo 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 \| 3mo ago
10.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| react, typescript, python \| 3mo ago
11.	Founding Engineer (Neighborbrite) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| generative vision models, llm, next.js \| 3mo ago
12.	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 \| 3mo ago
13.	Founding Engineer (Vye Health) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| react, postgresql, aws \| 3mo ago
14.	Founding Engineer (Albert Bow) California, United States \| Up to $300,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, distributed systems, llm \| 3mo ago
15.	Founding Engineer (Nohi) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 3mo ago
16.	Founding Engineer - Robotics Data Infrastructure (Neural Motion) California, United States \| $150,000 – $220,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, go, distributed systems \| 3mo ago
17.	Founding Engineer (Letty) London, London, United Kingdom \| £80,000 – £120,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, fastapi, backend fundamentals \| 3mo ago
18.	Founding Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) United States \| $150,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| go, typescript, next.js \| 3mo ago
19.	Founding Engineer (Back-end) (Stealth Startup) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend engineering, apis, databases \| 3mo ago
20.	Founding Engineer - Staff Distributed Systems (Birdai Labs, Inc) United States \| remote \| full-time \| senior \| rust, c++, distributed systems \| 3mo ago
21.	Founding Engineer (AI startup-Remote) (CyberCoders) Seattle, Washington, United States \| $170,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, machine learning, aws \| 3mo ago
22.	Founding Engineer (Reval) New York, New York, United States \| $180,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, postgres \| 3mo ago
23.	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 \| 3mo ago
24.	Founding Engineer (CoinBanker) United States \| remote \| part-time \| lead \| react native, react, node.js \| 3mo ago
25.	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 \| 3mo ago
26.	Founding AI Engineer (Part Time) - Prompt Engineering & LLM Applications (Y22 AI) United States \| remote \| full-time \| entry \| prompt engineering, llm applications, python \| 2mo ago
27.	Founding ML Engineer (TrueMile.AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| machine learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning \| 2mo ago
28.	Founding AI Engineer (LinkMD AI) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, llm, ai \| 2mo ago
29.	Founding AI Engineer (Kaelux) United States \| From $160,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| ai engineering, langgraph, n8n \| 2mo ago
30.	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 \| 2mo ago
31.	Founding AI Engineer (Farsyt) Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| python, apis, databases \| 2mo ago
32.	Founding AI Engineer (Edelman Legal Consulting PLLC) New York, New York, United States \| hybrid \| contract \| lead \| ai, rag, llm \| 3mo ago
33.	Founding AI Engineer (Healthcare) (ReClym Health) United States+1 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| fastapi, react, next.js \| 3mo ago
34.	Founding ML Engineer – Search & Agents (Greylock Partners) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| software engineering, search systems, retrieval \| 3mo ago
35.	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 \| 3mo ago
36.	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 \| 3mo ago
37.	Founding CTO Engineer (iOS-First, Mobile Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| ios, swift, mobile development \| 3mo ago
38.	AI Founding Engineer (Supply Veins (Techstars '24)) California, United States+1 \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| neural networks, pattern recognition, natural language processing \| 2mo ago
39.	Founding AI/ML Engineer (Prismera) New York, New York, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| llm orchestration, retrieval infrastructure, document understanding \| 2mo ago
40.	Founding AI/ML Engineer / Startup / $500k+ / NYC (Open Talent) New York, United States \| $500,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| llms, rag, agentic systems \| 3mo ago
41.	Founding AI GTM Engineer (Grasply™) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, api integration, rest api \| 3mo ago
42.	Founding DevOps Engineer (Equity-Based – Pre-Funding Startup) (Orchestrator Technology Inc) Florida, United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, production systems \| 3mo ago
43.	Founding Senior Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, backend \| 3mo ago
44.	Founding Backend Engineer (Wingback Security) San Francisco Bay Area, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, go, typescript \| 2mo ago
45.	Founding Product Engineer (Phaselaw) New York City, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| next.js, react, tailwind \| 3mo ago
46.	Founding Backend Engineer (Phaselaw) New York City, New York, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| mid \| python, postgres, elasticsearch \| 3mo ago
47.	Founding Head of Engineering (kadence) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| full-stack development, backend development, frontend development \| 3mo ago
48.	Founding Head of Engineering (AI) (Deploy IQ) United Kingdom \| remote \| full-time \| executive \| ai/ml, llms, agent systems \| 3mo ago
49.	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 \| 3mo ago
50.	Founding Product Engineer (Mobile-First, React Native / Expo) — Dallas (Hybrid / Remote) (Frienzy Inc.) Dallas, Texas, United States \| hybrid \| contract \| lead \| react native, expo, react \| 3mo ago

view all 118 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 118 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.