Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer
$250,000 – $300,000 base + equity
United States (Remote)

Company
A venture-backed AI platform company building enterprise-grade data infrastructure and custom AI systems for large-scale organizations.

Introduction
This company is redefining how enterprises adopt AI by building deeply integrated, production-grade AI systems and agent workflows. Partnering with some of the world’s most sophisticated investment firms and their portfolio companies, they design and deploy AI solutions that drive real operational efficiency at scale.
Having recently secured significant funding from top-tier investors, the business is entering a high-growth phase, transitioning from early traction to rapid expansion. With a small, elite team already in place, they are now hiring a Founding Infrastructure Engineer to build and scale the backbone of their platform.

Role Summary
This is a high-impact, founding role where you’ll architect and own the infrastructure powering enterprise AI workloads. You’ll design scalable, secure, multi-tenant systems from the ground up, enabling AI agents, data pipelines, and orchestration layers to operate reliably in production environments.
This is a true zero-to-one opportunity, ideal for someone who thrives in ambiguity and wants full ownership across infrastructure, DevOps, and platform security.

What You’ll Do
Architect and build distributed backend systems for AI agent workloads and large-scale data processing
Design and implement robust ETL pipelines to support high-quality data ingestion and transformation
Develop internal APIs for orchestration, retrieval, and task execution across AI systems
Lead infrastructure and DevOps practices using Terraform and Kubernetes across cloud environments
Establish and enforce security best practices, including IAM, secrets management, and system hardening
Build and scale multi-tenant infrastructure for enterprise deployments
Partner closely with the CTO and founding team on platform evolution and technical strategy
Manage and optimize data warehouse and data lake environments

What You’ll Bring
Proven experience building and scaling infrastructure in startup or zero-to-one environments
Strong background in distributed systems and cloud-native architecture
Deep proficiency in Python and/or Go
Hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform preferred)
Strong understanding of containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes)
Experience implementing security best practices in production systems
A self-starter mindset with the ability to own systems end-to-end

Tech Stack
Python
Terraform
Kubernetes (K8s)
AWS
Snowflake / Databricks / BigQuery / Redshift / Iceberg
Modern data lakehouse architectures

Bonus Points
Experience with SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, or similar frameworks
Strong SQL and business intelligence experience
Background in FinTech, Cybersecurity, or AI platforms
Previous experience as an early engineer or startup founder

Why Join?
Foundational, first-of-its-kind infrastructure role with full ownership
Work on cutting-edge AI systems deployed in real enterprise environments
High-caliber, deeply technical founding team
Backed by top-tier investors with strong market momentum
Above-market compensation and meaningful equity
Opportunity to shape both the platform and engineering culture from day one

About People In AI
People In AI is a specialist recruitment partner focused on building world-class AI and engineering teams. We work closely with high-growth companies to connect exceptional talent with impactful opportunities at the forefront of AI innovation.
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