Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer

Full time

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San Francisco, CA | New York, New York | Onsite

2 - 8 Years of Experience

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Who is Recruiting from Scratch:

Recruiting from Scratch is a premier talent firm that focuses on placing the best product managers, software, and hardware talent at innovative companies. Our team is 100% remote and we work with teams across the United States to help them hire.

Founding Engineer

Location

San Francisco, CA / New York, NY

On-site role requiring 5 days/week in the office.

Compensation

$175,000 – $250,000 Base + Competitive Founding Equity Total compensation: $175,000 – $300,000 depending on equity and candidate profile.

Visa

Open to H-1B Transfers / OPT Transfers / New H-1B / TN Open to visa transfers and new visa sponsorships.

Company Stage

Seed / Early-Stage – AI-Native Healthcare Technology Company

Industry

Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Health Insurance, InsurTech, Enterprise Software, AI Agents, Benefits Technology

About the Company

Our client is building an AI-native health insurance platform designed to transform how small businesses access and manage employee health benefits.

The company is replacing the traditional health insurance brokerage model with AI-powered workflows that automate complex brokerage and servicing processes while enabling human brokers to provide higher-quality, consultative guidance.

The platform uses AI agents to automate labor-intensive workflows including plan research, quoting, enrollment, and ongoing benefits servicing.

Backed by leading venture capital investors, the company operates as a small, talent-dense organization with a highly experienced founding team and a rapidly expanding engineering function.

As a Founding Engineer, you'll join a small engineering team and have significant ownership over product architecture, AI systems, user experience, and engineering culture.

This is an opportunity for a strong full-stack or backend-focused engineer who wants to build AI-native products from 0-to-1 while solving high-impact problems in healthcare and insurance.

What You'll Do

• Build and iterate on agentic AI systems that automate complex health insurance brokerage workflows

• Develop AI agents that support broker analysis and operational workflows

• Build systems that help service operators serve significantly more clients at higher quality

• Own full-stack product development from initial concept through production

• Design backend services and APIs using Python

• Build frontend applications and user experiences using TypeScript and React

• Integrate LLMs into production applications

• Build and maintain AI agent orchestration systems

• Design evaluation systems for AI agents

• Develop guardrails and reliability infrastructure for high-stakes AI workflows

• Build systems that monitor and evaluate AI agent performance

• Develop tools and workflows using MCP and modern AI infrastructure

• Translate complex insurance workflows into scalable software systems

• Work directly with brokers and internal service operators to understand operational pain points

• Build tools that improve broker productivity and customer experience

• Design systems capable of handling complex and messy real-world insurance data

• Build AI-powered workflows for plan research and comparison

• Develop systems supporting quoting and enrollment workflows

• Build automation for ongoing customer servicing

• Work across the product stack based on the highest-priority company needs

• Make architecture and technology decisions in a rapidly evolving environment

• Own technical projects from ideation through production deployment

• Build reusable infrastructure and engineering patterns as the company scales

• Help define the technical architecture for a rapidly growing AI-native product

• Establish engineering standards and development practices

• Contribute to engineering culture as the team scales

• Collaborate closely with the founding team and engineering leadership

• Balance rapid iteration with reliability and quality

• Solve ambiguous technical problems using first-principles thinking

• Work closely with internal stakeholders to rapidly validate and improve products

• Build products that directly impact how small businesses and employees access healthcare benefits

• Help shape the long-term engineering and AI strategy of the company

• Ideal Candidate Background

• Experience Requirements

• 2–8 years of experience in software engineering or related technical roles

• Experience owning products or major projects end-to-end

• Experience in full-stack or backend-focused engineering roles

• Strong experience building and shipping production software

• Experience taking products from ideation through production

• Experience working in startup or high-growth environments preferred

• Experience building user-facing applications

• Experience working with AI-powered products preferred

• Experience with LLMs, AI agents, or modern AI tooling preferred

• Strong ability to operate independently

• Experience working in highly ambiguous environments

• Strong product engineering mindset

• Experience collaborating directly with users or internal stakeholders

• Experience making architectural decisions with limited precedent

• Demonstrated ability to take ownership beyond narrowly defined engineering tasks

• Technical Requirements

• Strong Python proficiency

• Strong TypeScript proficiency

• Strong backend engineering fundamentals

• Strong full-stack engineering capabilities

• Experience building production APIs

• Experience building user-facing applications

• Strong React experience

• Experience working with LLMs and AI APIs

• Experience building or integrating AI agents preferred

• Experience with agentic AI systems preferred

• Experience with AI evaluation systems preferred

• Experience designing AI guardrails and reliability systems preferred

• Experience with MCP or MCP-connected systems preferred

• Strong software architecture fundamentals

• Experience with distributed or scalable systems preferred

• Strong API design and integration skills

• Experience working with databases and data models

• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills

• Experience building production-grade software

• Ability to rapidly learn emerging AI technologies

• Ability to evaluate and integrate new AI tooling

• Ability to build reliable applications on top of modern AI infrastructure

• Strong understanding of application architecture

• Ability to work across frontend, backend, and AI systems

• Strong systems design and engineering fundamentals

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related technical field preferred

• Strong computer science fundamentals

• Equivalent practical engineering experience accepted

• Candidates with strong technical pedigree through high-growth startups, leading technology companies, trading firms, or top-tier universities preferred

• Soft Skills

• Exceptional ownership and execution ability

• Highly hands-on engineering mindset

• Strong builder mentality

• Comfortable operating in ambiguous environments

• Strong first-principles problem-solving ability

• Excellent technical communication skills

• Strong product intuition

• Strong customer empathy

• Comfortable working directly with brokers and service operators

• Strong curiosity around AI and emerging technologies

• Comfortable learning rapidly

• Strong bias toward action

• Comfortable taking ownership without heavy direction

• Strong architectural judgment

• Comfortable making decisions with incomplete information

• Strong ability to prioritize competing technical and product needs

• Low-ego working style

• Strong collaboration skills

• Comfortable working closely with founders

• Strong sense of urgency

• Comfortable working in a small, talent-dense engineering team

• Strong interest in healthcare and insurance technology

• Strong interest in AI agents and AI-native products

• Comfortable working across the full product stack

• Comfortable building from 0-to-1

• Strong communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders

• High slope and learning velocity

• Strong engineering quality instincts

• Comfortable working on-site in San Francisco or New York 5 days/week

• Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $175,000 – $250,000

• Total compensation: $175,000 – $300,000

• Competitive founding equity package

• Opportunity to join an early-stage AI-native healthcare company

• Founding-level ownership over product and engineering decisions

• Opportunity to shape engineering culture and architecture

• Direct collaboration with founders and senior technical leadership

• Opportunity to build AI agent systems from 0-to-1

• Exposure to LLMs, MCP, AI agents, and modern AI infrastructure

• Opportunity to solve complex healthcare and insurance workflows

• High autonomy and significant technical ownership

• Opportunity to build products directly impactin