What does a startup 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 startup engineer runs $120k–$200k base + early-stage equity.

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

13 of the current 283 listings (5%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in United States.

What companies hire startup 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 startup engineer and a regular startup 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.

Startup Engineer Jobs in the United States

US startup engineer postings are the noisiest title in the market. The term covers everything from "first hire at a 2-person company" to "150th engineer at a Series D." The builder-role filter narrows it to companies under 50 people where the role genuinely involves wearing many hats. Compensation ranges $120k–$200k base, with equity meaningful at companies you'd actually have heard of. The job description should specify "wear many hats" or end-to-end ownership; if it doesn't, the title is probably misleading.

283 active 5% remote median salary $240k

1.	Founding Engineer (AI startup-Remote) (CyberCoders) Seattle, Washington, United States \| $170,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| python, machine learning, aws \| 2mo ago
2.	Founding AI/ML Engineer / Startup / $500k+ / NYC (Open Talent) New York, United States \| $500,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| llms, rag, agentic systems \| 1mo ago
3.	Founding Engineer (Spur) Chicago, Illinois, United States \| $120,000 – $160,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, kotlin \| 1mo ago
4.	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
5.	Founding Engineer (Neighborbrite) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| generative vision models, llm, next.js \| 1mo ago
6.	Lead Engineer (Ralle) United States \| remote \| part-time \| lead \| full-stack, mvp, ai \| 1mo ago
7.	Founding AI Product Engineer at AI Startup (Besty AI) New York, New York, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| ai, llm, product management \| 1mo ago
8.	Founding Engineer (Albert Bow) California, United States \| Up to $300,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, distributed systems, llm \| 1mo ago
9.	Founding Engineer (kadence) New York City, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| python, gcp, docker \| 1mo ago
10.	Founding Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) United States \| $150,000 – $200,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| go, typescript, next.js \| 1mo ago
11.	Founding Engineer (CoinBanker) United States \| remote \| part-time \| lead \| react native, react, node.js \| 2mo ago
12.	Backend Engineer (Adapt) California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| backend, full-stack, ai products \| 1mo ago
13.	Founding Software Engineer (Monarch Recruiters) Palo Alto, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| software engineering, product design, customer support \| 1mo ago
14.	Founding DevOps Engineer (Equity-Based – Pre-Funding Startup) (Orchestrator Technology Inc) Florida, United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, production systems \| 1mo ago
15.	Product Engineer (Imbue) San Francisco, California, United States \| $170,000 – $350,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| react, typescript, python \| 2mo ago
16.	Software Engineer (SF) (Fractional AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| $160,000 – $220,000/yr \| remote \| full-time \| senior \| software engineering, ai systems, system design \| 1mo ago
17.	Full Stack Engineer (Underdog.io -Apply to top tech jobs in 60 seconds. A place where companies apply to you) New York, New York, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| mid \| react, django, full stack development \| 1mo ago
18.	Product Engineer (Moonset Health) Seattle, WA, United States \| $120,000 – $180,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| react, react native, fastapi \| 1mo ago
19.	Product Engineer (Y Combinator) San Francisco, California, United States \| $185,000 – $485,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| rails, react, full-stack \| 1mo ago
20.	AI/ML Engineer \| Python \| LLM Agents \| Agentic Workflows \| Must have startup experience (Optimal) New York, New York, United States \| $180,000 – $280,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| python, llm agents, agentic workflows \| 1mo ago
21.	Full Stack Engineer (Figwork) Sunnyvale, California, United States \| $150,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| full-stack development, frontend, backend \| 1mo ago
22.	Founding Engineer (Reval) New York, New York, United States \| $180,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, postgres \| 2mo ago
23.	Full Stack Engineer (Wayco (YC W26)) Atlanta, Georgia, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| mid \| python, backend, postgres \| 2mo ago
24.	Founding Engineer (Chasi) San Francisco, California, United States \| $120,000 – $170,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| typescript, react, next.js \| 1mo ago
25.	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
26.	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
27.	Founding Engineer (Arcadia) San Francisco, California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| react, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
28.	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 \| 1mo ago
29.	Frontier Software Engineer (GiveCampus) District of Columbia, United States \| remote \| full-time \| senior \| react, javascript, ruby on rails \| 2mo ago
30.	Engineering, GTM (AirOps) San Francisco, United States+2 \| hybrid \| full-time \| mid \| llm, rag, python \| 1mo ago
31.	Founding Software Engineer (Recruiting from Scratch) New York, New York, United States \| $250,000 – $300,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| typescript, react, next.js \| 1mo ago
32.	Founding Engineer (Back-end) (Stealth Startup) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| lead \| backend engineering, apis, databases \| 1mo ago
33.	Software Engineer (Clad) New York City, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| software engineering, ai, construction \| 1mo ago
34.	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
35.	Product Engineer (CoPlane) New York City, New York, United States+2 \| remote \| full-time \| mid \| python, typescript, react \| 1mo ago
36.	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
37.	RevOps Engineer (Dragonfly Operating Partners) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| clay, n8n, heyreach \| 1mo ago
38.	Software Engineer, AI x Healthcare (Asha Health (YC F24)) Manhattan, New York, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| backend engineering, ai agents, product management \| 1mo ago
39.	Software Engineer ($180K - $220K + Equity) at YC-backed AI Data Infrastructure Startup (CoffeeSpace) San Francisco, California, United States \| $180,000 – $220,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| entry \| next.js, react, python \| 1mo ago
40.	Software Engineer (Conduit) San Francisco, California, United States \| $150,000 – $200,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| python, django, svelte \| 1mo ago
41.	Founding Product Engineer (Phaselaw) New York City, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| next.js, react, tailwind \| 1mo ago
42.	Applied AI Engineer (flows.cv) California, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| senior \| llm, agent systems, rag pipelines \| 1mo ago
43.	Founding Engineer & CTO (NovusMinds AI) San Francisco, California, United States \| on-site \| full-time \| executive \| python, typescript, go \| 1mo ago
44.	Software Engineer (Jack) New York, New York, United States \| $80,000 – $140,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| lead \| frontend development, react, full-stack \| 1mo ago
45.	Frontend Engineer (React \| TypeScript) (Epic Placements) San Francisco, California, United States \| $200,000 – $270,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| react, typescript, next.js \| 1mo ago
46.	Founding Engineer (Vye Health) United States \| remote \| full-time \| lead \| react, postgresql, aws \| 1mo ago
47.	Systems Engineer \| Distributed Systems \| Python \| TypeScript \| Kubernetes \| Must have Startup Experience (Optimal) New York, New York, United States \| $240,000 – $350,000/yr \| on-site \| full-time \| senior \| distributed systems, python, typescript \| 2mo ago
48.	Founding Engineer (ryw) Houston, Texas, United States \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| api design, async patterns, data modeling \| 1mo ago
49.	Senior Consulting Engineers (In The Loop) United States \| $100 – $200/hr \| remote \| contract \| senior \| next.js, typescript, python \| 1mo ago
50.	Software Engineer, AI (Ruli) San Francisco, California, United States \| $110,000 – $200,000/yr \| hybrid \| full-time \| entry \| python, typescript, serverless \| 1mo ago

view all 283 results

Frequently asked questions

What does a startup 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 startup engineer runs $120k–$200k base + early-stage equity.
Are startup engineer jobs in the united states remote-friendly?: 13 of the current 283 listings (5%) allow remote work; the rest are on-site or hybrid in United States.
What companies hire startup 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 startup engineer and a regular startup 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.