What does a founding engineer in the united states earn?

US base salaries skew highest globally for builder roles, with most listings concentrated in SF, NYC, Austin, Seattle, and remote-US. The typical band for a founding engineer runs $130k–$220k base + 0.5%–2% equity.

Are founding engineer jobs in the united states remote-friendly?

3 of the current 19 listings (16%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in United States.

What companies hire founding engineer jobs in the united states?

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 the United States

Founding engineer hiring in the US is concentrated in three places: the Bay Area (still), New York (rising), and remote-US (everyone). Pay ranges are wide: $130k base in a pre-seed all-equity company up to $250k+ at a well-funded Series A. The constant: you're the first or second engineer, you make foundational technical decisions, and there's no PM between you and the customer. Visa sponsorship varies by company stage; pre-seed startups often can't, Series A and later usually can.

19 active 16% remote median salary $275k

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 \| 5mo 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 \| 5mo ago
3.	Founding Engineer & CTO (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 5mo ago
4.	Founding Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) New York, New York, United States \| $170,000 – $185,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, django, typescript \| 6mo ago
5.	Founding AI Engineer (Part Time) - Prompt Engineering & LLM Applications (Y22 AI) United States \| remote \| full-time \| entry \| prompt engineering, llm applications, python \| 5mo ago
6.	Founding ML Engineer (TrueMile.AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| machine learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning \| 6mo ago
7.	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 \| 6mo ago
8.	AI Founding Engineer (Supply Veins (Techstars '24)) California, United States+1 \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| neural networks, pattern recognition, natural language processing \| 5mo ago
9.	Founding AI/ML Engineer / Startup / $500k+ / NYC (Open Talent) New York, United States \| $500,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| llms, rag, agentic systems \| 6mo ago
10.	Founding Backend Engineer (Wingback Security) San Francisco Bay Area, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, go, typescript \| 5mo ago
11.	Founding Machine Learning Engineer (Medical AI) (DeepRec.ai) California, United States \| $170,000 – $250,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| machine learning, representation learning, llm interpretability \| 6mo ago
12.	Full Stack Engineer (Underdog.io -Apply to top tech jobs in 60 seconds. A place where companies apply to you) New York City, New York, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| mid \| react, next.js, typescript \| 6mo ago
13.	Software Engineer (Underdog.io -Apply to top tech jobs in 60 seconds. A place where companies apply to you) Brooklyn, New York, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| python, node.js, rust \| 6mo ago
14.	AI Builder Intern - Agentic AI (Tabhi) Austin, Texas, United States \| on-site \| internship \| internship \| agentic ai, llms, agent frameworks \| 5mo ago
15.	Machine Learning Engineer, Robot Learning, Loco-Manipulation (Path Robotics) Columbus, Ohio, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| python, pytorch, mlops \| 5mo ago
16.	Software Engineer - AI (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| python, typescript, go \| 5mo ago
17.	DevSecOps Engineer - AI (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| devsecops, ai security, llm security \| 5mo ago
18.	Entrepreneur in Residence - Technical Co-founder (CTO) (FutureSight) United States \| remote \| full-time \| executive \| applied ai, b2b, ai \| 5mo ago
19.	Head of Product - AIVM (Agentic AI & Blockchain Platform) - Asia (ChainGPT) India+417 \| remote \| full-time \| executive \| product management, ai/ml infrastructure, blockchain \| 5mo ago

Frequently asked questions

What does a founding engineer in the united states earn?: US base salaries skew highest globally for builder roles, with most listings concentrated in SF, NYC, Austin, Seattle, and remote-US. The typical band for a founding engineer runs $130k–$220k base + 0.5%–2% equity.
Are founding engineer jobs in the united states remote-friendly?: 3 of the current 19 listings (16%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in United States.
What companies hire founding engineer jobs in the united states?: 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.