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 210 active listings on Jobs Base, 13 (6%) 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.

210 active 6% remote median salary $200k

1.	Founding Engineer, (Construction Operations) (Marble) Bristol, United Kingdom+2 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| software engineering fundamentals, cs foundations, data structures \| 3w ago
2.	Founding Engineer (Waypoint Learning) United States+1 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, python, mcp \| 3w ago
3.	Founding Engineer (kadence) New York City, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, gcp, docker \| 4w ago
4.	Founding Engineer (Lance (YC W26)) San Francisco, California, United States \| $160,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| python, javascript, software development \| 4w ago
5.	Founding Engineer (Octozi) New York City, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, aws \| 4w ago
6.	Founding Engineer / Founding GTM (MintMCP) San Francisco Bay Area, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| infra, security, agents \| 4w ago
7.	Founding Engineer (Kiloforge) San Francisco, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| 4w ago
8.	Founding Engineer (Eve) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, sveltekit, cloudflare workers \| 1mo ago
9.	Founding Engineer (Strix) New York City, New York, United States+1 \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, ai \| 1mo ago
10.	Founding Engineer (Deep Core Technology) Canada \| CA$105,000 – CA$125,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, python, nextjs \| 1mo ago
11.	Founding Engineer (US) (Haast) United States+1 \| $180,000 – $220,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| go, node.js, typescript \| 1mo ago
12.	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 \| 1mo ago
13.	Founding Engineer & CTO (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 1mo ago
14.	Founding Engineer (Ventura) San Francisco, California, United States \| $140,000 – $220,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| nextjs, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
15.	Founding Engineer & CTO (WealthyMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 1mo ago
16.	Founding Engineer (Stilta) New York, NY, United States+1 \| $100,000 – $200,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, typescript, ai agents \| 1mo ago
17.	Founding Engineer (Chasi) San Francisco, California, United States \| $120,000 – $170,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 1mo ago
18.	Founding Engineer (Spur) Chicago, Illinois, United States \| $120,000 – $160,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, kotlin \| 1mo ago
19.	Founding Engineer (Aurorin CAD) San Francisco, California, United States \| $100,000 – $150,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| systems programming, native applications, swift \| 1mo ago
20.	Founding Engineer (Effective AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, go \| 1mo ago
21.	Founding Engineer (0-5yrs) (Agentive) Provo, Utah, United States \| $85,000 – $125,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| react, reactive programming, elixir \| 1mo ago
22.	Founding Engineer, Apps (Starch) Brooklyn, New York, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, postgres \| 1mo ago
23.	Founding Engineering Lead (Meeno) New York, United States \| $180,000 – $220,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend, mobile, web \| 1mo ago
24.	Founding Engineer (Revyl) San Francisco, California, United States \| $100,000 – $200,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| ai agents, distributed systems, mobile device infrastructure \| 1mo ago
25.	Founding Engineer (Avent) San Francisco, California, United States \| $120,000 – $150,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| next.js, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
26.	Founding Engineer (Rovi Health) New York, New York, United States \| $170,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, react, typescript \| 1mo ago
27.	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 \| 1mo ago
28.	Founding Engineer (Cofia) New York, New York, United States \| $180,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| full stack, production software, distributed systems \| 1mo ago
29.	Founding Engineer - AI-Native (NeoRecruit) India \| remote \| full-time \| entry \| flutter, dart, react.js \| 1mo ago
30.	Founding Engineer (ryw) Houston, Texas, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| api design, async patterns, data modeling \| 1mo ago
31.	Founding Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) New York, New York, United States \| $170,000 – $185,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, django, typescript \| 1mo ago
32.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| react, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
33.	Founding Engineer (Neighborbrite) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| generative vision models, llm, next.js \| 1mo ago
34.	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 \| 1mo ago
35.	Founding Engineer (Vye Health) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| react, postgresql, aws \| 1mo ago
36.	Founding Engineer (Albert Bow) California, United States \| Up to $300,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, distributed systems, llm \| 1mo ago
37.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| react, python, aws \| 1mo ago
38.	Founding Engineer (Nohi) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 1mo ago
39.	Founding Engineer - Robotics Data Infrastructure (Neural Motion) California, United States \| $150,000 – $220,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, go, distributed systems \| 1mo ago
40.	Founding Engineer (Letty) London, London, United Kingdom \| £80,000 – £120,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, fastapi, backend fundamentals \| 1mo ago
41.	Founding Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) United States \| $150,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| go, typescript, next.js \| 1mo ago
42.	Founding Engineer (Back-end) (Stealth Startup) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend engineering, apis, databases \| 1mo ago
43.	Founding Engineer - Staff Distributed Systems (Birdai Labs, Inc) United States \| remote \| full-time \| senior \| rust, c++, distributed systems \| 1mo ago
44.	Founding Engineer (AI startup-Remote) (CyberCoders) Seattle, Washington, United States \| $170,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, machine learning, aws \| 1mo ago
45.	Founding Engineer (Reval) New York, New York, United States \| $180,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, postgres \| 1mo ago
46.	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 \| 1mo ago
47.	Founding Engineer (CoinBanker) United States \| remote \| part-time \| lead \| react native, react, node.js \| 1mo ago
48.	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 \| 2mo ago
49.	Founding AI Engineer - Manhattan Labs (Spur) Palo Alto, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, python, llm \| 3w ago
50.	Founding AI Engineer / New Venture Lead (Simple Ventures) Toronto, Canada \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| 3w ago

view all 210 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 210 active listings on Jobs Base, 13 (6%) 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.