01Overview
About the job
Founding Engineer | Applied AI
📍 San Francisco, CA | 4+ days/week in person
💰 $250K base + 10% equity
🧠 4+ years of software engineering experience
About the Company & Role
An early-stage legal AI company is building a new kind of law firm designed to function like primary care for legal services: helping people understand their legal needs and connecting them with the right attorney.
A core part of the platform is a conversational AI intake receptionist that integrates directly with law firms' phone systems and websites, understands incoming legal inquiries, and routes clients to the appropriate resources.
The product is already working. Now the company is hiring its first engineer to work directly with the Founder and turn the existing prototype into a reliable, secure, production-grade platform.
This is a true founding role with significant influence over the product, architecture, technical direction, and future engineering organization.
What You'll Own
Take the existing conversational AI product from prototype to production-grade reliability
Own the voice AI intake experience across live calls and web-based intake
Build the full-stack referral platform connecting attorneys, partner firms, and clients
Design systems that safely handle sensitive client information and funds
Own privacy, security, reliability, and production infrastructure
Work directly with partner firms to implement and integrate the product
Integrate with existing phone systems, call routing, telephony, and IVR environments
Build new product workflows based directly on feedback from firms and users
Help shape technical strategy as the company's first engineering hire
What We're Looking For
4+ years of professional software engineering experience
Recent hands-on experience building applied AI products used by real customers
Experience taking an early product or prototype into production
Strong ownership of production reliability, security, and/or privacy
Full-stack capability and comfort owning products end-to-end
Experience building customer-facing software
Comfortable working directly with customers or partners during implementation and troubleshooting
Excited by a highly autonomous, early-stage startup environment
Based in the Bay Area or willing to relocate
Comfortable working in person in San Francisco at least 4 days per week
Especially Relevant Backgrounds
Experience in any of the following is a strong plus, but not required:
Voice AI or conversational AI
Telephony, SIP, call routing, or IVR
Healthcare AI, particularly intake, scribing, or triage
Legal AI
High-stakes AI products involving sensitive data
Forward-deployed or customer-facing engineering
Why This Role Stands Out
🚀 First engineering hire with meaningful influence over what gets built and how
🧠 Real applied AI problems, not AI added as a feature after the fact
🔐 Engineering challenges centered around reliability, privacy, security, and high-stakes real-world usage
🤝 Direct exposure to customers and the Founder rather than layers of product and engineering management
📈 Early enough to meaningfully shape the company, product, and future technical team
Compensation & Benefits
$250,000 base salary
10% equity
Health insurance
Free lunch
Relocation support for the right candidate
Potential U.S. visa sponsorship/transfer for candidates already based in the United States
This is best suited for an engineer who wants substantial ownership, enjoys operating without a predefined playbook, and wants to help build both the product and the engineering foundation of a company from the earliest stage.
