Founding Software Engineer - Backend and Infrastructure Job at YC Work at a Startup (San Francisco)

Founding Software Engineer - Data Platform

As the Founding Software Engineer on our Data Platform team at Arlo, you will bu...

Location

United States , New York City

Salary:

200000.00 - 220000.00 USD / Year

Arlo

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

3+ years of experience as a backend engineer, data engineer, or software engineer with exposure to data pipelines and large-scale infrastructure
Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and scalable system design
Demonstrated ability to design secure, robust, and scalable infrastructure for data and backend systems
Hands-on experience with big data tools (e.g., Spark) and pipeline orchestration platforms (e.g., Dagster, Airflow, Prefect)
Proficiency in a backend programming language like Python and solid SQL skills for querying and database design
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and their data services

Job Responsibility

Design and build scalable data pipelines that process billions of healthcare claims records
Develop robust ETL workflows to ingest, normalize, and transform medical data from multiple sources
Create infrastructure for real-time ML inference serving hundreds of millions of predictions
Build developer tooling to accelerate the work of our data scientists and ML engineers
Architect and implement monitoring systems to ensure data quality and model performance
Optimize PySpark code for feature construction to improve performance and efficiency

What we offer

performance bonus
equity
High ownership
Join an important mission
Growth & expansion
Apply AI to a problem that matters
High pace, high collaboration

Fulltime

Founding Engineer

Valerie Health is the AI front office for independent provider groups. We are re...

Location

United States , San Francisco

Salary:

125000.00 - 275000.00 USD / Year

Valerie Health

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

1 - 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a strong background in computer science
Previous experience in big tech or startups is a plus
Demonstrated experience in building end-to-end products
User-Focus: Deep empathy for users, with the ability to translate their needs into product features and prioritize effectively
Work as Craft: Interest in producing elegant, polished, and high-performance work, finding pride and joy in the details
Growth Mindset: Eagerness to learn new approaches, seek feedback, and continually improve skill sets
Strong Communicator: Clear and succinct in both written and verbal communication, capable of adjusting style for different audiences and conveying technical topics to non-technical stakeholders
Self-Starter & Adaptable: Proactively own projects from inception to completion, identify challenges, and offer solutions, thriving in a dynamic work environment

Job Responsibility

Collaborate closely with the rest of the team to shape product, business, and company direction. Help define and shape the culture of the company
Build a production-ready AI infrastructure, integrating and fine-tuning models across voice, text, and desktop agents. Build a reinforcement learning system with internal and external humans in the loop
Own end to end product surface areas that serve external and internal users. Build deeply empathetic and polished user experiences that raise the bar across the industry
Design, build and scale a HIPAA-compliant backend infrastructure that’s highly secure with strong availability and performance

What we offer

Offers Equity
Competitive salary, equity and benefits including medical, dental, vision, 401(k) and PTO

Fulltime

Founding Backend Engineer

As one of our first engineers, you’ll shape the technical foundation of Socratix...

Location

United States , Mountain View

Salary:

150000.00 - 200000.00 USD / Year

YC Work at a Startup

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

2–4 years of software engineering experience (CS degree or equivalent background)
Strong backend development skills with Python + FastAPI
Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS) and API design
A 0 → 1 builder mindset — comfortable creating from scratch
Ability to thrive in fast-paced startup environments

Job Responsibility

Design and deliver production-grade AI agents
Work directly with founders on roadmap and strategy
Collaborate with enterprise and startup partners to deliver impact
Drive execution in a high-ownership, high-leverage role
Learn firsthand what it takes to build a rocket-ship startup

What we offer

Competitive salary and equity benchmarked to top tech companies
Paid meals during workdays
100% health, dental, and vision coverage
Hybrid schedule - in-office 3 days a week
Unlimited PTO

Fulltime

Software Engineer (Founding DevOps)

Highbeam is building the future of business banking and cash management. Our pla...

Location

United States; Canada , New York; Toronto

Salary:

160000.00 - 260000.00 USD / Year

Highbeam

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

4+ years of experience in DevOps, platform engineering, or backend infrastructure roles
Deep experience with GCP, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines
Strong knowledge of observability tools (Datadog, Sentry, tracing, monitoring best practices)
Hands-on experience improving security in cloud platforms
Comfortable writing backend code
Familiar with Postgres tuning and optimization

Job Responsibility

Own and improve our GCP infrastructure (Pub/Sub, Cloud Tasks, Cloud Run, BigQuery, IAM)
Improve platform security, observability and reliability
Tackle tricky backend optimization and Postgres performance questions
Own and improve our CI/CD pipelines (faster builds, parallelized tests, incremental compilation)
Improve IntelliJ/Detekt setup and build a common dotfiles repo
Create and maintain our devtooling Dockerfiles
When capacity allows, contribute to the product backlog

What we offer

Offers Equity
Generous PTO
Comprehensive health & benefits package
Stipends for lunch, commute, wellness, and purchasing customer products
Yearly offsite

Fulltime

Founding AI Engineer

We’re hiring a Founding AI Engineer to lead the development of AI systems poweri...

Location

United States , New York

Salary:

160000.00 - 200000.00 USD / Year

Helpcare AI

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

3+ years of experience building production software systems
Experience building and shipping LLM-powered applications
Strong understanding of prompt design, model behavior, and evaluation techniques
Experience building RAG systems, embeddings pipelines, or retrieval architectures
Strong backend engineering skills (APIs, data pipelines, system design)
Ability to move quickly from prototype to production
Strong product intuition and desire to build user-facing AI experiences

Job Responsibility

Own the architecture and development of AI systems powering AI Allie
Build and ship LLM-powered product features used by hundreds of thousands of users
Design retrieval systems that ground model responses in financial data and internal knowledge
Develop evaluation frameworks to measure model quality, reasoning accuracy, and safety
Improve model performance, latency, and cost efficiency in production
Build infrastructure for prompt orchestration, memory, and contextual personalization
Design guardrails appropriate for financial products and regulated environments
Rapidly prototype and ship new AI-driven product capabilities

What we offer

Hybrid work environment: 4 days per week in our New York office
Work directly with the founding team
High ownership and the opportunity to shape AI at a rapidly growing fintech company

Fulltime

Founding Backend Engineer

We’re hiring a highly motivated and entrepreneurial Founding Backend Engineer to...

Location

United States , San Francisco, CA; Seattle, WA

Salary:

160000.00 - 190000.00 USD / Year

Plaud

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

3+ years of experience in building and scaling productivity SaaS tools
Experience with Python, FastAPI, Go, PostgreSQL, or similar technology
Familiar with cloud-based infrastructure like Azure, AWS, or GCP
Experience envisioning and delivering an effectively zero-to-one product to global customers
A deep understanding of LLMs, their capabilities, limitations, and potential applications
Demonstrated proficiency in a variety of technologies with the ability to quickly learn and adapt to new tools and languages
Previously been the first technical lead at an early-stage high-growth startup, with an emphasis on owning a project from conception to deployment
Strong leadership and team-building skills with a collaborative approach
Excellent strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities
Bachelor's or Master’s degree in a technical field (Computer Science, Engineering or a related discipline)

Job Responsibility

Take full ownership of the technical strategy and execution for our 'Plaud for Teams' product roadmap
Guide the complete lifecycle of our 'for Team' stack—from initial vision through to product launch
Architect and deliver scalable permission and collaboration systems and API integrations
Continuously explore, evaluate, and implement cutting-edge AI technologies
Clearly communicate technical direction, tradeoffs, and progress to leadership, cross-functional collaborators, and stakeholders
Build and lead a top-tier engineering team by recruiting, mentoring, and inspiring a culture of innovation
Foster seamless collaboration and alignment across U.S. and international teams

What we offer

Top-tier healthcare for employees and dependents, including dental and vision, and a generous employer subsidy
401(k) plan for full time employees with company matching
Unlimited PTO, plus 13 paid holidays
12 weeks of paid time off to spend time with your new family, regardless of gender
New hires are equipped with their choice of new top-of-the-line laptops and workstation setups
Best office equipment
Annual offsites
Free office drinks and snacks

Fulltime

Founding Machine Learning Engineer

We are seeking a Staff ML Engineer to define and build Adaptive's ML capabilitie...

Location

United States , NYC

Salary:

Not provided

Adaptive Security

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

8+ years of experience building ML systems in production
Experience standing up the ML function at an early stage startup or as the senior or lead ML person at a previous company
Strong software engineering fundamentals
Write production-quality code in modern languages (Python, Java, TypeScript)
Work within large codebases
Experience with cloud ML infrastructure (AWS SageMaker, Bedrock, Modal, Baseten, or similar)
Experience with common ML and data processing frameworks (PyTorch, Tensorflow, Spark)
Comfortable working across the stack — infrastructure, backend services, and data systems
Track record of mentoring MLEs and other engineers with observable, clear improvements in those you've worked with
High autonomy

Job Responsibility

Define Adaptive's ML strategy: where ML should be applied across our products, what infrastructure we need, and how we should approach build vs. buy decisions
Design and build production ML systems end-to-end — data pipelines, model training, evaluation frameworks, and inference serving
Establish evaluation methodology
Define how we measure model quality, catch regressions, and make data-driven decisions about model changes
Own the strategy for getting the data you need, in the format you need it — what/how to label, how to build feedback loops, and how our models improve over time
Partner with product engineers to integrate ML into the product
Write production code and work within our existing codebase
Over time, help build and lead the ML team as scope grows

Fulltime

Sdet

At Sully.ai, We’re Building the Most Impactful Healthcare Company on Earth. We b...

Location

United States

Salary:

165000.00 - 180000.00 USD / Year

Helpcare AI

Expiration Date

Until further notice

Requirements

5+ years in software engineering or SDET roles
Required early startup experience or have previously founded a SaaS company
Strong Python and backend testing experience
Deep experience testing APIs and distributed systems
Hands-on ownership of CI/CD and test infrastructure
Clear communicator who can influence engineering decisions

Job Responsibility

Own automated testing for Sully’s AI voice and workflow platform
Build test coverage across APIs, AI pipelines, integrations, and core user flows
Partner with backend, ML, and product to bake testability into features
Validate AI behavior, edge cases, and regressions in real healthcare scenarios
Build fast, reliable CI test pipelines that block bad deploys
Load and reliability test high-volume call and workflow traffic

Fulltime

Founding Software Engineer - Backend and Infrastructure

YC Work at a Startup

Location:
United States , San Francisco

Category:
IT - Software Development

Contract Type:
Not provided

Salary:

Job Description:

Job Responsibility:

Requirements:

Nice to have:

Additional Information:

Job Posted:
January 07, 2026

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