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?

2 of the current 27 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.

27 active 7% remote median salary $250k

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 ($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 \| 3mo ago
6.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| react, typescript, python \| 3mo ago
7.	Founding Engineer (Nohi) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 3mo ago
8.	Founding Engineer (Back-end) (Stealth Startup) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend engineering, apis, databases \| 3mo ago
9.	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
10.	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
11.	Founding ML Engineer (TrueMile.AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| machine learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning \| 2mo ago
12.	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
13.	Founding ML Engineer – Search & Agents (Greylock Partners) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| software engineering, search systems, retrieval \| 3mo ago
14.	Founding CTO Engineer (iOS-First, Mobile Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| ios, swift, mobile development \| 3mo ago
15.	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
16.	Founding Head of Engineering (kadence) San Francisco, California, United States+1 \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| full-stack development, backend development, frontend development \| 3mo ago
17.	Founding Software Engineer (MIRA) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| llm, fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented generation (rag) \| 3mo ago
18.	Founding Software Engineer, Perception (Kovari Industries) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| c++, camera pipelines, computer vision \| 3mo ago
19.	Founding Software Engineer, Robot Learning (Kovari Industries) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| robotics, perception stack, sensor data \| 3mo ago
20.	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 \| 3mo ago
21.	Founding CTO / Founding Engineer (iOS-First, 0→1 Builder) (Solve) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| ios, swift, backend systems \| 3mo ago
22.	Software Engineer (Founding) (Moe) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| react native, typescript, aws lambda \| 3mo ago
23.	Applied AI Engineer (Artisan) San Francisco, United States+2 \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| ai, llm, prompt engineering \| 3mo ago
24.	Agentic Engineer (MGT Insurance) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| ai agents, llms, autonomous systems \| 3mo ago
25.	Software Engineer - AI (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, go \| 2mo ago
26.	Fullstack Engineer ($185K - $250K + 0.1% - 0.3% Equity) at Founders Fund-backed AI Enterprise Startup (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $185,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| python, react, apis \| 3mo ago
27.	DevSecOps Engineer - AI (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| devsecops, ai security, llm security \| 2mo ago

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?: 2 of the current 27 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.