What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Software Engineer position at Monarch Recruiters?
Founding Software Engineer
Palo Alto (In Office)
Our client is an AI research and product lab for chip design. They build AI models and systems that can explore, design, optimize, and verify new hardware. The goal is to reimagine chip design using AI, cut down ASIC design time and cost, and enable a new era of ultra-efficient, domain-specific chips powering the future of computation.
Born out of Stanford, their team blends researchers and engineers from DeepMind, Meta, Apple, Intel, and other frontier labs. Backed by leading VCs and angels, including the Chief Scientist at Google, Stanford professors, and founders of chip companies, they operate in stealth, pushing the limits of AI4EDA and building the intelligence layer for the hardware revolution.
Role Responsibilities
As a Founding Member of the Technical Staff (Software), you’ll build the core developer platform that powers AI-driven chip design. You’ll own the full stack—developing intuitive, high-performance systems using TypeScript, Python, and modern frameworks—while integrating cutting-edge AI features and models in collaboration with our ML team.
This is a foundational engineering role where you’ll design the architecture for the platform, optimize local deployments, and build seamless interfaces for chip engineers to interact with intelligent design agents. You’ll shape the developer experience end-to-end—from indexing massive codebases to building scalable databases—and make critical technical decisions that define the product. Expect to ship fast, iterate daily, and leave your fingerprints on every layer of a system redefining how hardware gets built.
Core Skills:
- Proficiency in TypeScript, Python, Javascript, Rust, C & C and extensive full-stack experience.
- Comfort with at least one of these framework (e.g. Next.js, React.js, Express, Django, Rails).
- Strong personal full stack projects.
Technical Experience:
- Strong full-stack experience—designing RESTful APIs, working with relational or NoSQL databases.
- Familiarity with frontend component libraries and state management patterns.
- Proven track record of shipping features quickly and iterating fast based on feedback.
Systems Knowledge:
- Comfortable in Linux environments, using virtual environments, Docker, and version control (Git)
- Experience setting up or maintaining CI/CD (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, etc.)
Bonus:
- Previous experience working with IDE like VS Code, Jet Brains, Extensions or dev tool/ coding agents at AI coding assistant companies.
- Founding engineer or early hire at a high-growth startups, ex-Quant.
- Competitive programming experience, Recognition at IMO, IOI, IPho etc. or published research.
- Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and container orchestration (Kubernetes).
- Demonstrated ability to learn new technologies and frameworks on the fly.
Education:
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics or a related field.