What does a founding engineer in san francisco earn?

SF compensation runs at the top end of the band. Founding engineer offers commonly clear $200k base + 0.5–2% equity at seed-to-Series-A. The typical band for a founding engineer runs $130k–$220k base + 0.5%–2% equity.

Are founding engineer jobs in san francisco remote-friendly?

4 of the current 59 listings (7%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in San Francisco.

What companies hire founding engineer jobs in san francisco?

Jobs Base aggregates listings across YC-backed startups, growth-stage companies, and selected larger companies hiring with builder-role characteristics.

What's the difference between a founding engineer and a regular founding engineer?

Jobs Base only lists builder roles. Positions where one person owns the product end-to-end. We filter out ticket-driven, narrowly-scoped roles even when the title matches. About 9% of listings scraped match this definition.

Founding Engineer Jobs in San Francisco

San Francisco is where the founding-engineer playbook was written and it's still where the largest concentration of these roles posts. Most are seed to Series A, with 1–10 person teams, a working product, and a runway clock. SF founding engineer comp commonly clears $180k–$220k base + 0.5%–2% equity; the highest grants land at pre-seed companies that can't pay cash. Office attendance is nearly always required. These are the companies most likely to insist on 5 days in person.

59 active 7% remote median salary $210k

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 \| 4w ago
2.	Founding Engineer (Kiloforge) San Francisco, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| 4w ago
3.	Founding Engineer (Eve) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, sveltekit, cloudflare workers \| 1mo ago
4.	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
5.	Founding Engineer & CTO (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 1mo ago
6.	Founding Engineer (Ventura) San Francisco, California, United States \| $140,000 – $220,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| nextjs, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
7.	Founding Engineer & CTO (WealthyMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 1mo ago
8.	Founding Engineer (Chasi) San Francisco, California, United States \| $120,000 – $170,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 1mo ago
9.	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
10.	Founding Engineer (Effective AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, go \| 1mo ago
11.	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
12.	Founding Engineer (Avent) San Francisco, California, United States \| $120,000 – $150,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| next.js, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
13.	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
14.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| react, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
15.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| react, python, aws \| 1mo ago
16.	Founding Engineer (Nohi) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 1mo ago
17.	Founding Engineer (Back-end) (Stealth Startup) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend engineering, apis, databases \| 1mo ago
18.	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
19.	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
20.	Founding ML Engineer (TrueMile.AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| machine learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning \| 1mo ago
21.	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 \| 1mo ago
22.	Founding ML Engineer (Effective AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| machine learning, deep learning, reinforcement learning \| 1mo ago
23.	Founding ML Engineer – Search & Agents (Greylock Partners) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| software engineering, search systems, retrieval \| 1mo ago
24.	Founding GTM Engineer (Revyl) San Francisco, California, United States \| $100,000 – $200,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| onboarding flows, growth experiments, internal tools \| 1mo ago
25.	Founding CTO Engineer (iOS-First, Mobile Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| ios, swift, mobile development \| 1mo ago
26.	Founding Mobile Engineer (React Native / iOS) - On site in San Francisco! (G2i Inc.) San Francisco, California, United States \| $180,000 – $220,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| react native, expo, typescript \| 3w ago
27.	Founding Senior Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, backend \| 1mo ago
28.	Founding Lead AI Engineer (Harnham) San Francisco, California, United States \| $250,000 – $300,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| llm, langchain, onnx \| 3w ago
29.	Founding Product Engineer (Sparkles) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $200,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, ai tools \| 1mo ago
30.	Founding Head of Engineering (kadence) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| full-stack development, backend development, frontend development \| 1mo ago
31.	Founding Backend Engineer (Plaud) San Francisco, California, United States \| $160,000 – $190,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, fastapi, go \| 1mo ago
32.	Founding Embedded Engineer (BootLoop) San Francisco, California, United States \| $180,000 – $280,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| embedded linux, microcontroller, fpga \| 1mo ago
33.	Founding Software Engineer (MIRA) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| llm, fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation (rag) \| 1mo ago
34.	Founding Software Engineer, Perception (Kovari Industries) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| c++, camera pipelines, computer vision \| 1mo ago
35.	Founding Software Engineer, Robot Learning (Kovari Industries) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| robotics, perception stack, sensor data \| 1mo ago
36.	Founding Full-Stack Engineer (Empathy Talent) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $230,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| react, typescript, node.js \| 1mo ago
37.	Staff Engineer (Varick Agents) San Francisco, California, United States \| $220,000 – $280,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| systems design, ai/ml systems, inference \| 1mo ago
38.	Founding CTO / Founding Engineer (iOS-First, 0→1 Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| ios, swift, backend systems \| 1mo ago
39.	Founding Member (OpenWork) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| $150,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| software engineering, product design \| 1mo ago
40.	Software Engineer (ABC People) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| react, python, node.js \| 1mo ago
41.	Software Engineer (Founding) (Moe) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| react native, typescript, aws lambda \| 1mo ago
42.	AI-Native Founding Engineer (Jobright.ai) San Francisco, California, United States \| $130,000 – $170,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, sql \| 3w ago
43.	Product Engineer and Founding GTM Lead (Kinelo) San Francisco, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| 1mo ago
44.	Sr. AI Engineer (Greylock Partners) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| agentic applications, llm, rag pipelines \| 1mo ago
45.	Product Engineer - Special Projects (Nash) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, postgresql, production systems \| 1mo ago
46.	AI Engineer, New Business Unit (Nirvana Insurance) San Francisco, California, United States \| $144,000 – $240,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| llms, vlms, asr \| 1mo ago
47.	Infrastructure Engineer (Zag) San Francisco, California, United States \| $300,000 – $350,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, go, swift \| 1mo ago
48.	Senior Software Engineer, Data (Probably Genetic) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $210,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| senior \| python, sql, aws \| 1mo ago
49.	Full Stack Software Engineer (Gumloop) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| $120,000 – $220,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, react \| 1mo ago
50.	Jony Ive (Entangl) San Francisco, California, United States \| $120,000 – $180,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| svelte, prototyping, product design \| 1mo ago

view all 59 results

Frequently asked questions

What does a founding engineer in san francisco earn?: SF compensation runs at the top end of the band. Founding engineer offers commonly clear $200k base + 0.5–2% equity at seed-to-Series-A. The typical band for a founding engineer runs $130k–$220k base + 0.5%–2% equity.
Are founding engineer jobs in san francisco remote-friendly?: 4 of the current 59 listings (7%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in San Francisco.
What companies hire founding engineer jobs in san francisco?: Jobs Base aggregates listings across YC-backed startups, growth-stage companies, and selected larger companies hiring with builder-role characteristics.
What's the difference between a founding engineer and a regular founding engineer?: Jobs Base only lists builder roles. Positions where one person owns the product end-to-end. We filter out ticket-driven, narrowly-scoped roles even when the title matches. About 9% of listings scraped match this definition.