What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Engineer position at Kinetic?
What is PayMe
PayMe helps everyday people find and claim money they are already owed, from class action settlements, mass arbitrations, unclaimed funds, and more.
It is a fast-growing consumer fintech product where product quality, speed, trust, and execution all matter at once.
What we need
PayMe needs a founding engineer who can take vague goals, figure out what matters, and implement basically anything needed to move the business forward.
This is a true full-stack builder role. We want someone with strong product judgment who can turn ambiguity into shipped product.
Who you are
Agentic engineer, meaning AI writes most code and you are genuinely more powerful because of it
Consumer product or fintech instincts are a plus
Fast-paced, high-agency experience, often in seed or series A environments
Comfortable shipping without a fully written PRD
Clear product taste and evidence of shipped work
Strong individual contributor, not an engineering manager profile
Why it's exciting
You will join a very small engineering team and help shape its next chapter
You will own meaningful product and engineering decisions early
You will work on a real consumer product with real scale and real urgency
You will work on a small team where good ideas ship fast
What you own
The highest-leverage product and engineering work across PayMe
Turning fuzzy problems into concrete plans, technical choices, and shipped product
Working shoulder-to-shoulder with product, growth, and design
Using AI heavily, because almost all code here is expected to be written with AI assistance
Helping set the engineering tone as one of the earliest dedicated engineers on PayMe
What success looks like
Important product work ships fast and actually changes outcomes
Engineering is no longer a bottleneck on PayMe’s highest-leverage work
The team can hand you vague goals and trust you to make strong product and technical decisions
You raise the bar on speed, ownership, and leverage
What you're not here to do
Be a narrow specialist who avoids product work
Wait for a perfect PRD before moving
Optimize for process over output
Act like a manager before proving you can build
Our process
15 min screen with Kinetic's Lead Engineer
Half-day async paid project
Deep dive with PayMe's General Manager
Team conversations
Final in-office day
Target turnaround ~2 weeks from start to finish.
Salary : $160,000 - $200,000