Founding Engineer

Note: Hiring for one of our clients.

Title: Founding Engineer

Reporting to: Founder

Function: Technical Lead

Experience: 6 - 10 years

Type: Full-time | Leadership role

Role Overview

We are seeking a Technical Lead / Founding Engineer who has hands-on experience building a

technology product from 0 to 1 and scaling it to a fully functional, market-ready platform.

This role requires someone who has worked in a product-based startup environment, understands ambiguity, has taken architectural decisions from day one, and has seen a system evolve from MVP to scalable production infrastructure.

You will play a critical role in shaping the technology foundation, engineering culture, and long-term scalability of the product.Why This Role is Critical

This is not just a Technical Lead position. This is a foundational technology leadership role that will define the engineering backbone of the company for years to come.

What we are specifically looking for a candidate who:

• Has built a product from scratch (ideation MVP scale)
• Has worked in a product-first company (not services-based)
• Has handled architecture, backend, frontend, deployment, and scaling challenges
• Understands real-world production issues (performance, outages, scaling bottlenecks)
• Has experience transforming early-stage messy codebases into structured systems

Technical Requirements (Additions)

• Must Have experience leading or managing engineers in a product environment
• Proven ability to ship through teams, not just as an individual contributor
• Strong collaboration skills across product, ops, and business stakeholders
• Preferred Experience as a Founding Engineer / Tech Lead / Early Engineering Manager
• Experience building teams in 01 or 110 stage startups

Key Responsibilities

1. Product Architecture & System Design

• Design and own system architecture from early-stage to scale
• Make foundational technology decisions (stack, frameworks, infrastructure)
• Ensure scalability, performance, and maintainability
• Implement clean, modular, and extensible architecture
• Optimize systems for high availability and growth

2. Build from 0 to 1 to 100

• Develop MVP versions with speed and clarity
• Convert business requirements into scalable technical solutions
• Lead rapid iterations and feature rollouts
• Establish development best practices from the ground up
• Improve system performance as user base grows
• Implement caching, database optimization, and API efficiency
• Design for multi-tenancy, security, and production resilience

4. Engineering Leadership

• Mentor and technically guide developers team
• Establish coding standards and review mechanisms
• Build engineering processes (deployment, testing, documentation)
• Create scalable development workflows

5. Hands-on Development

• Actively contribute to backend and frontend code
• Review AI-assisted code for quality and security
• Debug complex production issues
• Lead incident management and resolution