Demo

Founding Engineer – Full Stack

Clera
San Francisco, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 7/10/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 8/8/2026
About The Role

Join a small, high-velocity founding team at a Y Combinator–backed AI startup building brand intelligence tooling at the intersection of AI research, product, and engineering. As a Founding Engineer – Full Stack, you'll help companies understand how large language models perceive and recommend them — and shape the product, systems, and engineering culture from the ground up. This is a rare opportunity to be one of the earliest engineers at a company defining an entirely new category of AI-powered software.

What You'll Do

  • Own problems end-to-end — from high-level customer insight through research and all the way down to infrastructure.
  • Maintain a close feedback loop with customers and the executive team; ship fast and iterate.
  • Help shape and grow a new engineering team at the start of a new era of software development.
  • Continuously reinvent best practices for building and collaborating alongside AI agents.
  • Translate customer needs directly into product features with strong design and product instincts.

What We're Looking For

Required:

  • 1 years of experience on engineering teams (2 preferred), including at least one stint of 18 months in a strong engineering environment (startup or scale-up).
  • Comfortable working full-stack — from customer-facing UI to backend services and cloud infrastructure.
  • Proficient with React, Python, Terraform, and AWS.
  • Experience building agentic systems or working with LLMs in production.
  • Startup experience or compelling self-driven personal projects that demonstrate initiative.
  • Strong product and design sense; ability to translate ambiguous customer needs into concrete features.
  • Must be a US citizen or hold a valid US work visa (no sponsorship required for this criterion — authorized to work in the US).

Nice to Have:

  • Direct experience working with customers (sales calls, discovery, feedback sessions).
  • Eagerness to adopt AI-powered coding and development tooling.
  • Background in scientific or AI research (e.g., interpretability, NLP, ML).

Compensation & Benefits

  • Salary: $150,000 – $250,000 USD annually, depending on experience.
  • Early-stage equity as a founding team member.
  • Visa sponsorship available.

Location

This is a full-time, on-site role based in San Francisco, CA. In-person collaboration with the founding team is expected.

Salary : $150,000 - $250,000

If your compensation planning software is too rigid to deploy winning incentive strategies, it’s time to find an adaptable solution. Compensation Planning
Enhance your organization's compensation strategy with salary data sets that HR and team managers can use to pay your staff right. Surveys & Data Sets

What is the career path for a Founding Engineer – Full Stack?

Sign up to receive alerts about other jobs on the Founding Engineer – Full Stack career path by checking the boxes next to the positions that interest you.
Income Estimation: 
$101,387 - $124,118
Income Estimation: 
$119,030 - $151,900
Income Estimation: 
$73,784 - $86,677
Income Estimation: 
$90,372 - $103,622
Income Estimation: 
$61,825 - $80,560
Income Estimation: 
$90,032 - $105,965
Income Estimation: 
$85,996 - $102,718
Employees: Get a Salary Increase
View Core, Job Family, and Industry Job Skills and Competency Data for more than 15,000 Job Titles Skills Library

Job openings at Clera

  • Clera San Francisco, CA
  • About The Role A fast-growing, pre-seed AI startup in the talent and recruiting space is looking for a Founding Engineer Intern to join their founding team... more
  • 12 Days Ago

  • Clera San Francisco, CA
  • About The Role A pre-seed AI recruiting marketplace startup is looking for a Founding AI/ML Engineer to shape the core intelligence layer of their platform... more
  • 15 Days Ago

  • Clera Los Angeles, CA
  • The Opportunity Clera is the AI talent agent. We don't wait for applications—we go find the best people and get them hired at companies like Luminai, Winds... more
  • 15 Days Ago

  • Clera San Francisco, CA
  • About The Role Join an early-stage, venture-backed AI startup reimagining computer-aided engineering (CAE) for the AI era. As an AI/ML Engineer, you'll sha... more
  • 15 Days Ago


Not the job you're looking for? Here are some other Founding Engineer – Full Stack jobs in the San Francisco, CA area that may be a better fit.

  • Clera San Francisco, CA
  • About The Role A Y Combinator-backed AI startup is looking for a Founding Engineer – Full Stack to join a small founding team at the ground floor. The comp... more
  • 15 Days Ago

  • Clera San Francisco, CA
  • About The Role Join an early-stage AI/ML startup tackling one of construction's most challenging problems: automating blueprint reading, cost estimation, a... more
  • 9 Days Ago

AI Assistant is available now!

Feel free to start your new journey!