Founding Engineer
This is an on-site role based in Los Angeles, CA. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States — visa sponsorship is not available.
Founding Engineer at a YC-backed GovTech AI startup building voice agents for local government, working on full stack.
ABOUT THE ROLE
We're a Y Combinator-backed GovTech AI startup building AI-powered voice agents for local government departments — helping civil servants automate routine constituent inquiries, improve service responsiveness, and free up staff to focus on higher-value work. Our product handles calls 24/7 across dozens of languages and integrates with existing government technology stacks.
We're hiring a Founding Engineer to join our small, early team and help shape the technical foundation of the product. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role where you'll work directly with the founding team — making architecture decisions, shipping production features end-to-end, and helping define how we build as the company scales. Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
- Design and implement core product features across the full stack — frontend, backend, and infrastructure.
- Own architecture and infrastructure decisions to support scalable, reliable production systems.
- Ship production-quality code quickly and iterate based on real user and customer feedback.
- Build and maintain APIs, services, and data models that power the product.
- Establish DevOps practices including CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, observability, and reliability standards.
- Collaborate closely with founders and cross-functional partners on product direction and priorities.
- Participate in customer conversations to translate needs into technical solutions.
- Help mentor and recruit early engineering hires as the team grows.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
Must-haves
- 3+ years of professional software engineering experience building and shipping production web applications.
- Proven experience shipping end-to-end features at an early-stage or small startup.
- Experience deploying and maintaining cloud-based services with CI/CD pipelines.
- Proficiency in at least one core backend language (e.g., Node.js, Python, or Go).
- Experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs with proper versioning and security considerations.
- Experience building MVPs and iterating quickly based on user feedback.
- Experience designing and working with relational and/or NoSQL databases, including data modeling.
- Full-stack development experience — backend APIs and frontend UI.
- Strong fundamentals in software design, algorithms, and system architecture.
- Excellent communication skills and a collaborative, product-minded approach.
Nice-to-haves
- Frontend development experience with modern frameworks such as React or Vue, including responsive UI design.
- Experience with containerization and cloud-native architectures (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Experience with observability, monitoring, and error reporting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Sentry).
- Background working on software for government, public sector, or similarly regulated domains.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
Compensation details were not specified for this role. Equity participation is expected given the founding-team nature of the position. Specific package details will be discussed during the interview process.
LOCATION
This is an on-site role based in Los Angeles, CA. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States — visa sponsorship is not available.