Founding Engineer at Andreessen Horowitz in San Francisco, CA

Job description

• Application
• The role and what we require
• We’re looking for a founding engineer who can work directly with modern fleets to build specialized software while also building the shared platform underneath each deployment. This is not a one-off implementation role. The challenge is to make each deployment reflect the reality of the customer’s fleet without creating a bespoke build for every customer.
• You will be employee 3 and responsible for helping to shape the architecture, product, engineering culture, and customer-deployment model. Day to day could involve 1) interviewing company employees to understand their biggest challenges, 2) building integration and agent tooling for a key customer data source, 3) optimizing harness capabilities using trace data, 4) fine-tuning specialized models for firmware error diagnosis, 5) generalizing repeated customer needs into shared services for the platform, and much more.
• You will be handling the chaos of an early startup and have to navigate difficult situations with customers, product decisions, time constraints. We will all be working closely but you need agency to run your own ship when everyone is spread thin, which is often the case! We value execution, speed, and accountability.

Responsibilities

• Work directly with modern fleets to build specialized software while also building the shared platform underneath each deployment.
• Help shape the architecture, product, engineering culture, and customer-deployment model.
• Interview company employees to understand their biggest challenges.
• Build integration and agent tooling for a key customer data source.
• Optimize harness capabilities using trace data.
• Fine-tune specialized models for firmware error diagnosis.
• Generalize repeated customer needs into shared services for the platform.
• Handle the chaos of an early startup and navigate difficult situations with customers, product decisions, time constraints.

Requirements

• Who we’re looking for
• The exact titles you’ve held matter less than the systems you’ve owned.
• A founding or early engineer who helped deploy a product with its first enterprise customers.
• A forward deployed engineer who kept improving the platform underneath customer implementations.
• A platform or infrastructure engineer who wants to work closer to customers and end users.
• An engineer in a field where software interacts with complex real-world systems.
• Strong engineering background; CS, math, software engineering, physics preferred
• Have operated cross-functionally, whether at a startup wearing multiple hats or by driving product/commercial thinking at a larger company
• Has owned and shipped meaningful software
• Can work directly with demanding customers
• Can move between deployment work and platform architecture
• Will work in person and travel to customer sites 25–50% of the time
• experience in robotics, autonomy, physical AI, fleet management, industrial or warehouse automation, IoT, or telemetry and observability.
• experience building systems with strong security practices around customer data, permissions, access controls, and data isolation.

Skills

Required

• Strong engineering background
• Operated cross-functionally
• Owned and shipped meaningful software
• Work directly with demanding customers

Benefits

• Base Salary $150K – $200K • 0.5% – 1% • Benefits
• $150-200K base + 0.5–1% equity + benefits