What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding AI Engineer position at People In AI?
Founding AI Engineer, Agentic Systems & Infrastructure
Compensation: $150,000 - $175,000 Founding Level Equity
Location: New York City (In-office)
Company Summary:
A fast-growing, venture-backed startup building AI-native solutions to transform one of the world’s largest, least-digitized industries.
This company is addressing critical challenges across the built environment by leveraging AI to accelerate the delivery of complex, real-world projects.
Operating within a multi-trillion-dollar industry that has historically lagged in software adoption, they are developing AI-driven systems that streamline and automate intricate workflows for enterprise customers.
With strong early traction and an experienced founding team spanning both technical and domain expertise, the company is building toward a new category at the intersection of AI and real-world infrastructure.
The Role
This is a rare opportunity to join as a Founding AI Engineer, working at the frontier of agentic systems and real-world deployment. You’ll design and ship production-grade AI agents that own critical workflows end-to-end.
You’ll operate with high autonomy and influence, building core systems from the ground up with a clear path toward leadership (this role is expected to evolve into Head of Engineering).
What You’ll Do
- Build agent-based systems that power long-lived, stateful workflows
- Develop production AI agents that execute complex, real-world tasks end-to-end
- Design document ingestion pipelines across PDFs, policies, drawings, and communications
- Implement retrieval, reasoning, and evaluation layers that continuously improve in production
- Architect secure, multi-tenant infrastructure for enterprise customers
- Ship customer-facing product features using modern web technologies
- Create internal tools that maximize team velocity and leverage
What You’ll Bring
- Must have: Industry experience building and deploying AI agents or LLM-powered systems in production that are used by real people
- Strong software engineering fundamentals and systems thinking
- High ownership mindset focused on outcomes, not just implementation
- Comfort working across infrastructure, deployment, reliability, and security
- Experience with data-heavy or document-centric workflows
- Curiosity and adaptability, quick to adopt new tools and paradigms
- Customer-first mentality with a strong bias toward impact
Tech Stack
- Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, React
- Backend: Python, TypeScript services
- AI/ML: OpenAI, Claude, multi-agent systems, structured outputs, eval pipelines
- Frameworks: LangGraph, agent SDKs, emerging orchestration tools
- Infrastructure: Cloud-native architecture, CI/CD, monitoring, security-first systems
- Tooling: Modern AI-assisted development environments and internal coding agents
Why Join?
- Build at the frontier of AI agents applied to real-world, high-value workflows
- Direct impact on industries managing billions in assets
- Join a small, high-caliber team with deep technical and domain expertise
- Fast growth environment with significant ownership and autonomy
- Collaborative, low-ego culture that values speed, learning, and craftsmanship
About People In AI
People In AI connects exceptional talent with the most innovative AI companies globally. We partner with high-growth startups and category-defining businesses to build world-class teams shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
Salary : $150,000 - $175,000