HOME Software Engineering & Dev Founding Engineer
  • Clera
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Full-Time
  • 27 days ago
  • $160,000 – $270,000
Clera VERIFIED EMPLOYER

Founding Engineer.

Software Engineering & Dev Full-Time

Founding Engineer: our view in 3 lines...

  • The Role:This role is for an engineer building core infrastructure for a graph-native context and memory platform for AI agents.
  • The Person:The person will own core infrastructure, make architecture decisions, contribute to benchmark and research work, and help shape the team’s technical direction.
  • Requirements:The ideal candidate has 3+ years of relevant engineering experience, strong CS fundamentals, proficiency in Rust or Go, and hands-on experience building distributed systems.

About the role

About the Role

This is a founding engineer role on a small, high-conviction infrastructure team building a graph-native context and memory platform purpose-built for AI agents. You'll own significant pieces of the core — query engine, graph storage internals, distributed systems — and make architecture decisions that shape the product for years to come. This is not a feature factory; every engineer here has direct influence on the architecture, the roadmap, and the culture.

What You'll Do

  • Own and ship core infrastructure spanning query execution, the graph storage layer, and distributed systems.

  • Make architecture decisions with long-term product impact alongside the founding team.

  • Contribute to benchmark and research work that defines the category.

  • Participate in architecture reviews and navigate hard technical trade-offs with real production consequences.

  • Help raise the technical ceiling as the team grows.

What We're Looking For

  • 3+ years of relevant engineering experience with strong CS fundamentals — the kind where you reason from first principles.

  • Proficiency in Rust or Go, with hands-on experience building distributed systems (dealbreaker).

  • Experience designing and shipping core infrastructure components — query engines, storage layers, or graph internals — in a production environment (dealbreaker).

  • Comfort owning large, ambiguous problems without a playbook and an ownership mindset that extends to design docs and architecture decisions.

  • Track record of shipping production systems under real load.

  • Nice to have: experience building or scaling databases or storage infrastructure; open-source contributions in systems-level projects; prior founding engineer or early-stage infrastructure background.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary range: $160,000 – $270,000 USD annually, plus meaningful equity. Learning budget, flexible PTO, and wellness perks included. Visa sponsorship is not available.

Location

On-site in San Francisco, CA, United States.

Published August 31, 2026
Location San Francisco, CA
Job Type Full-Time