Demo

Founding Engineer, AI

Stealth AI Startup
San Francisco, CA Full Time
POSTED ON 6/19/2026
AVAILABLE BEFORE 7/17/2026

Help us measure intelligence in dollars


We believe the next generation of evals should look less like exams and more like markets.


The autonomous economy is arriving. EICO is building the frameworks to measure it, and to make sure humans retain a stake. That means infrastructure where AI systems find demand, acquire customers, deliver, and turn funding into revenue, with every step verified.


EICO is backed by top VCs. We are building a small, elite technical team to build agent systems that can survive contact with real markets.


We are looking for rare people: researchers who can ship, engineers who can think from first principles, and founding technical leaders who can set the bar for the company.


Founding Engineer


You will build the core software systems behind EICO’s company-building agents.


This is a founding engineering role for a staff/principal-caliber generalist who can operate across the stack: agent backends, data collection, product surfaces, workflow orchestration, internal tools, infrastructure, reliability, and verification. Your work will make it possible for AI systems to find demand, acquire customers, deliver work, and turn activity into trusted records the rest of EICO can build on.


What you’ll own:

  • The product and platform layer for EICO’s company-building agents: workflows, tools, state, permissions, execution, and observability.
  • Agent backends and harnesses that let AI systems find demand, acquire customers, deliver work, and create traces we can train from and verify.
  • Data collection systems across the workflows where company-building happens: agent actions, customer interactions, feedback, delivery quality, revenue events, and failures.
  • Internal tools for incubation teams, researchers, reviewers, and operators to inspect, improve, and trust what agents are doing.
  • Infrastructure that turns messy real-world activity into reliable records: provenance, lineage, auditability, quality checks, and verified outcomes.
  • The engineering standard for the company: architecture, code quality, speed, reliability, security, and taste.


What we’re looking for:

  • Staff-level, principal-level, or equivalent engineering ability. Titles matter less than evidence.
  • At least 5 years of experience, with a record of owning important systems end to end.
  • Top engineering-company or frontier startup background preferred: OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, Meta, Google, Stripe, Databricks, Palantir, Scale AI, Ramp, Cursor, Cognition, Harvey, Perplexity, Retool, Vercel, Linear, Airbnb, Uber, Coinbase, Plaid, Figma, or equivalent.
  • Has built production systems that were complex, high-leverage, and used by real people.
  • Strong across at least two of: backend systems, data infrastructure, full-stack product, AI/agent systems, distributed systems, infra, security, or internal tooling.
  • Strong Python and TypeScript preferred. Go, Rust, SQL, data systems, cloud infra, or ML tooling are strong pluses.
  • Can work close to AI systems: tool use, eval loops, RAG, inference APIs, agent orchestration, data collection, and model-facing workflows.
  • Can turn ambiguity into architecture, then into shipped product.
  • Has taste. Builds simple systems where possible and serious systems where necessary.
  • High-agency operator. Comfortable being handed the hardest, messiest technical problems and owning them.


This is probably not for you if:

  • You need a narrow, fully specified engineering lane.
  • You only want to build clean backend services and avoid product, data, or AI messiness.
  • You have not owned production systems end to end.
  • You are uncomfortable working directly with founders, researchers, and incubation teams.
  • You optimize for process over speed, or speed over correctness. EICO needs both.


To apply, submit via Linkedin here, or email your resume to careers@eico.so with a few lines about you and the most impressive thing you’ve built.

Salary.com Estimation for Founding Engineer, AI in San Francisco, CA
$136,327 to $175,611
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