CL

Clera

Founding Engineer

Salary Not Disclosed
San Francisco

About the Role

We're an early-stage, fast-growing enterprise AI platform (agentic operating system for businesses) that has achieved strong product-market fit and is growing revenue rapidly. Backed by Y Combinator and prominent angel investors from the AI and SaaS world, we have thousands of AI agents deployed at scale-up startups and enterprise companies today.

This is a founding engineer role — you'll operate at near-CTO level, taking vague problems all the way to shipped product with no hand-holding. You'll be backend-heavy and AI-native, but fully capable of going full-stack when needed. If you've ever wanted to shape a product and company from the ground up, this is that seat.

What You'll Do

  • Own large product areas end-to-end — from user insight through to production

  • Build and continuously improve our agentic systems: accuracy, reliability, and capability

  • Work at the frontier of AI engineering — context engineering, tool use, and agent architectures

  • Talk directly to users, understand their pain points, and scope features that actually solve problems

  • Ship full-stack when needed: Go backend, React + Vite (TypeScript) frontend

  • Champion AI-first development practices — coding agents, automation, and ruthless self-scaling

  • Review code quickly while maintaining high standards across the codebase

  • Design and work with APIs (REST and/or gRPC) in microservices architectures

  • Own CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, deployment workflows, and production observability

What We're Looking For

Must-haves:

  • Proven production experience building backend services in Go (Golang) — this is a dealbreaker

  • Authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship

  • Experience building frontend applications with React and TypeScript

  • Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and production monitoring/observability

  • Experience building and consuming APIs (REST and/or gRPC) in microservices environments

  • 0–3 years of professional software engineering experience (full-stack or equivalent)

Strong pluses:

  • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or equivalent) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)

  • Prior experience with AI infrastructure, prompt engineering, model deployment, or agent orchestration

  • Experience designing and shipping AI-driven products; familiarity with agentic AI systems, LLMs, or AI agents

  • Previous startup experience or a founding/early engineer background

  • Experience with relational databases (Postgres/MySQL) and NoSQL, with solid understanding of data storage trade-offs

  • AI research background or experience at an AI tooling/coding startup

  • Former founder — or someone who has built something meaningful from scratch (startup, side project, shipped feature)

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

You thrive if you:

  • Are a sharp, autonomous problem-solver who doesn't need a PM to decide what to build

  • Have deep product sense and build for users, not for code's sake

  • Are obsessed with using and building AI-first development tools (e.g. Claude Code, Cursor, coding agents)

  • Love clean, maintainable Go and hold high standards in code review

  • Thrive in ambiguity and move fast without sacrificing quality

Compensation & Benefits

  • Salary: $120,000 – $250,000 USD annually, reflecting the outsized impact of this founding role

  • Equity: Generous equity package commensurate with a founding-level position

  • Unlimited AI tooling budget — we practice what we preach

  • A seat at the table: you will shape the product and the company's direction

Location

  • On-site in San Francisco, CA

  • Visa sponsorship is not available — candidates must be authorized to work in the United States

Be cautious! Do not send money to a potential employer. Do not pay any money for a potential contract of employment or for pre-employment training.

Job Summary

About the Role We're an early-stage, fast-growing enterprise AI platform (agentic operating system for businesses) that has achieved strong product-market fit and is growing revenue rapidly. Backed by Y Combinator and prominent angel investors from the AI and SaaS world, we have

Application DeadlineFriday, January 29th, 2027
Salary
Not Disclosed
Job TypeFull Time
Experience LevelMid Level
Experience Length2 years
Date PostedSunday, August 2nd, 2026

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