What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Engineer position at Contrario (YC W25)?
About Contrario
Contrario (YC W25) is building the modern, AI-powered recruiting marketplace, connecting elite startup recruiters with fast-growing companies through AI-powered matching and operational tools. We’ve raised $2.5M from Y Combinator and Nexus Venture Partners and angels from Hudson River Trading, Stanford, and OpenAI. Our customers include 50 YC and venture-backed startups across engineering and GTM roles.
The Role
We're looking for our first in-person engineering hire: a founding engineer who will shape the technical foundation of Contrario. You'll be building AI-powered search and retrieval features while working across our full stack.
What You'll Do
Required
Contrario (YC W25) is building the modern, AI-powered recruiting marketplace, connecting elite startup recruiters with fast-growing companies through AI-powered matching and operational tools. We’ve raised $2.5M from Y Combinator and Nexus Venture Partners and angels from Hudson River Trading, Stanford, and OpenAI. Our customers include 50 YC and venture-backed startups across engineering and GTM roles.
The Role
We're looking for our first in-person engineering hire: a founding engineer who will shape the technical foundation of Contrario. You'll be building AI-powered search and retrieval features while working across our full stack.
What You'll Do
- Build AI features from the ground up: Design and implement intelligent search, retrieval, and recommendation systems that power our core product
- Own the full stack: Ship features end-to-end in Next.js, TypeScript, and Supabase -- from database schemas to user interfaces
- Move fast: Launch features quickly, gather feedback, and iterate rapidly in a startup environment
- Shape the culture: As engineering employee #1, you'll help define our engineering practices, team culture, and hiring bar
Required
- 0-3 years of full-stack software engineering experience
- Strong proficiency with TypeScript and modern web frameworks (Next.js)
- Solid understanding of AI/ML concepts -- but you should be comfortable working with LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, and retrieval systems
- Experience with databases and backend systems (Postgres/Supabase knowledge is valuable)
- Product-minded engineer who cares deeply about user experience
- Thrives in ambiguity and can operate independently
- Frontend: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
- Backend: Next.js TypeScript
- Database: Supabase (Postgres)
- Infrastructure: Vercel
Salary : $130,000 - $200,000
