What are the responsibilities and job description for the Founding Engineer position at Terac?
Location: San Francisco, CA (in-person preferred)
Team: Engineering (reporting to CTO Jack Blair)
Stage: Seed ($9M raised from Emergence, SignalFire, Audacious, ZFellows)
About Terac
We’re building a search engine for human thought.
While you might go to Google to search through the web, you come to Terac to search through human opinion. Consumer research teams at DoorDash, Notion, and Posh use Terac to test features and products before launch. Our AI-native researcher recruits the right panelists, conducts real voice interviews, and delivers transcripts and insights within hours—not weeks.
We’re solving a once-in-a-generation problem at the frontier of Voice AI, memory systems, and large-scale data matching. As the world races to automate engineering, the real bottleneck is understanding what to build and who to build for. Terac exists to fix that.
We started 5 months ago and have already raised $9M, built an in-house AI panel of thousands, and launched pilots with major consumer companies. Joining now means being part of the founding team defining the next $100B market.
The Role
We’re looking for a founding engineer who wants to own huge pieces of the product, move fast, and help build the future of human understanding.
You’ll work directly with our CTO to design, build, and scale the core systems behind Terac, from our sourcing algorithms and interviewer agents to our panel data pipelines and researcher tools.
This is not a “feature factory” role. You’ll ship end-to-end systems, debug live customer interactions, and shape the company’s engineering DNA from day one.
What You’ll Do
You’re the kind of engineer who might have once tried to start a company yourself, or still might someday. You’re relentless, hands-on, and care deeply about building something meaningful.
Must-haves
Team: Engineering (reporting to CTO Jack Blair)
Stage: Seed ($9M raised from Emergence, SignalFire, Audacious, ZFellows)
About Terac
We’re building a search engine for human thought.
While you might go to Google to search through the web, you come to Terac to search through human opinion. Consumer research teams at DoorDash, Notion, and Posh use Terac to test features and products before launch. Our AI-native researcher recruits the right panelists, conducts real voice interviews, and delivers transcripts and insights within hours—not weeks.
We’re solving a once-in-a-generation problem at the frontier of Voice AI, memory systems, and large-scale data matching. As the world races to automate engineering, the real bottleneck is understanding what to build and who to build for. Terac exists to fix that.
We started 5 months ago and have already raised $9M, built an in-house AI panel of thousands, and launched pilots with major consumer companies. Joining now means being part of the founding team defining the next $100B market.
The Role
We’re looking for a founding engineer who wants to own huge pieces of the product, move fast, and help build the future of human understanding.
You’ll work directly with our CTO to design, build, and scale the core systems behind Terac, from our sourcing algorithms and interviewer agents to our panel data pipelines and researcher tools.
This is not a “feature factory” role. You’ll ship end-to-end systems, debug live customer interactions, and shape the company’s engineering DNA from day one.
What You’ll Do
- Own and scale major parts of Terac’s core platform (e.g. sourcing algorithm, interviewer agent, data analysis pipelines).
- Architect and implement fullstack features using Next.js, TypeScript, tRPC, Prisma, and Supabase.
- Collaborate with the founders to shape product direction and prioritize the roadmap.
- Fix bugs, build fast, and move from “0 → 1 → scale” repeatedly.
- Recruit and mentor future engineers as the team grows.
- Use and improve Terac every day. We’re power users of our own product.
You’re the kind of engineer who might have once tried to start a company yourself, or still might someday. You’re relentless, hands-on, and care deeply about building something meaningful.
Must-haves
- 3 years of experience building fullstack products end-to-end.
- Deep fluency with TypeScript, React/Next.js, and modern backend tools (tRPC, Prisma, Postgres).
- Experience with LLMs, RAG architectures, and AI SDKs (Vercel AI SDK, Gemini, etc.).
- Proven ability to take full ownership of projects or small teams.
- Strong technical independence; you can design, ship, and iterate.
- Experience as a founding engineer or early-stage builder.
- Infra wizardry (AWS, CI/CD, scalable data systems).
- Familiarity with Terac’s stack: Vercel, Trigger.dev, Infisical, AWS, Supabase.
- Previous startup or high-ownership environments.
- High level engineering challenge: We’re building the infrastructure for matching questions to the best human answers at a global scale.
- Real impact, real users: Hundreds of people interact with our systems every day.
- Speed & autonomy: Small team, high trust, no bureaucracy.
- Meaningful equity: Join early and help shape the company’s DNA.
- Frontend: Next.js (React), TypeScript, Tailwind, Shadcn, Framer Motion
- Backend: tRPC, Prisma ORM, Supabase Postgres
- Infra: Vercel, Trigger.dev, Infisical, GitHub Actions, AWS
- AI: Vercel AI SDK, Gemini Live API, Gemini 2.5 Pro