Job Details

Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a talent firm that focuses on placing the best candidate for our clients. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across North America, South America, and Europe to help them hire.



Title of Role: Founding Product Engineer
Location: San Francisco, CA (On-site, 5 days a week; relocation assistance available)
Company Stage of Funding: Seed-Stage, recently raised $15M from top-tier investors
Office Type: On-site 5 Days a Week
Salary: $200K - $350K + Equity (0.5-2.5%)
Company Description

We are representing a venture-backed AI startup that is building the safety and reliability infrastructure for next-generation AI systems. Backed by leading investors from the AI ecosystem and experienced founders from top technology and consulting firms, the company is defining the gold standard for evaluating, monitoring, and certifying AI agents in real-world deployments.

With $15M in fresh funding, the company is expanding its founding team in San Francisco. This is an opportunity to become the first engineering hire and play a critical role in shaping technical direction, product vision, and company culture.
What You Will Do

• Serve as the first product engineer, working directly with the founding team to design, build, and ship customer-facing features.
• Shape core technical choices and set the foundation for long-term scalability.
• Build evaluation pipelines for detecting AI system failures (e.g., hallucinations, jailbreaks, brand risks, data leakage).
• Develop developer tools, monitoring systems, and safety frameworks to help AI builders meet enterprise-grade standards.
• Partner closely with early customers, shipping product iterations rapidly and incorporating feedback daily.
• Take ownership across the stack, from frontend (React, TypeScript, Next.js) to backend (Python, LLM pipelines).

Ideal Candidate Background

• 5+ years of hands-on product engineering experience at a reputable startup.
• 2-3+ years in a high-growth, product-focused startup environment where you shipped quickly and often.
• Experience working on B2B products with enterprise customers.
• Strong product sense and user orientation; you work backwards from customer problems.
• Demonstrated high agency: you prefer action and iteration over perfection.

Preferred

• Experience with AI/LLM agents, LangChain, or building evaluation pipelines.
• Prior founding engineer or early-stage startup experience.
• Background in designing systems for enterprise reliability and security.
• Exposure to "forward-deployed" or customer-facing engineering models.

Compensation and Benefits

• Salary: $200K - $350K
• Equity: 0.5-2.5% meaningful ownership in the company
• Full-time, on-site role in San Francisco with relocation assistance available
• Visa sponsorship available
• Work alongside an elite founding team with backgrounds from leading AI and technology companies

This is a rare opportunity to become the #1 engineer at a well-funded AI startup, working directly with founders to define technical foundations, ship quickly, and shape the future of AI safety.