Founding Software Engineer (iOS) at Recruiting from Scratch in New York, New York
- Company: Recruiting from Scratch
- Location: New York, New York
- Posted: Sep 23, 2026
- Type: Full-time
- Salary: $180,000–$280,000 + Competitive Equity
- Experience: 10+ years
- Visa sponsorship available
Overview
Build and ship the company's first iOS application from scratch. Own the mobile product end-to-end, from initial project setup and architecture through production launch and iteration. Define the technical foundation and long-term architecture for native iOS development.
Responsibilities
- Build and ship the company's first iOS application from scratch.
- Own the mobile product end-to-end, from initial project setup and architecture through production launch and iteration.
- Define the technical foundation and long-term architecture for native iOS development.
- Partner closely with Product and Design to turn ambiguous ideas into highly polished mobile experiences.
- Build AI-native mobile interactions, including conversational and chat-oriented product experiences.
- Determine how the web and mobile products should work together while taking advantage of experiences that are uniquely valuable on mobile.
- Establish modular architecture and scalable abstractions that allow the mobile codebase to grow cleanly.
- Define testing strategies, CI/CD infrastructure, reusable components, and engineering patterns for future mobile engineers.
- Maintain an exceptionally high bar for performance, interaction design, usability, and product polish.
- Make foundational technical decisions independently while remaining closely connected to customer needs.
- Ship quickly, learn from real user behavior, and continuously improve the product.
- Help hire and mentor future mobile engineers as the team expands.
Requirements
- 5–10 years of experience building user-facing iOS applications with meaningful production usage.
- Deep proficiency with Swift and modern native iOS development.
- Strong experience with UIKit and/or SwiftUI.
- Demonstrated experience taking an iOS application from 0→1, ideally with substantial ownership over architecture as well as the end-user experience.
- Has personally owned end-to-end development of a highly polished consumer or prosumer mobile product, or has worked as a founding/early iOS engineer.
- Able to provide examples of polished applications they have personally helped build, with clear ownership over meaningful portions of the product.
- Strong understanding of modern mobile architecture, patterns, and engineering best practices.
- Experience designing modular systems and abstractions that can support a growing product and engineering team.
- Strong product and design intuition, with an eye for the details that distinguish a functional mobile application from an exceptional one.
- Able to take ambiguous product problems and independently turn them into production-ready solutions.
- Highly customer-oriented and able to clearly explain who they were building for, what problem they were solving, and why specific product decisions mattered.
- Strong communication skills and comfortable working closely with Product and Design.
- Demonstrated career progression and meaningful ownership throughout prior roles.
- Comfortable operating with the autonomy expected of a founding engineer.
- Previous experience as a founding or very early iOS engineer.
- Experience building a consumer-grade mobile application with significant usage and a high degree of product polish.
- Background at a high-growth, venture-backed startup.
- A combination of strong startup experience and experience within a best-in-class engineering organization.
- Experience building AI-native or conversational mobile interfaces.
- Experience establishing mobile architecture, testing, and CI/CD infrastructure from scratch.
- Previous startup founder or founding engineer experience.
- Strong CS or other technical academic background.
- Experience working on data-intensive products.
- Track record of longer, meaningful tenure rather than repeated short-term or contract engagements.
- Genuine interest in startups, technology discovery, venture capital, and the company's underlying product mission.
Skills
Required
- Swift
- UIKit
- SwiftUI
- Native iOS development
- Mobile architecture
- Modular systems and abstractions
- Product and design intuition
- Communication skills
- Autonomy
- Customer orientation
Preferred
- CI/CD infrastructure
- Testing strategies
- Startup experience
- Data-intensive products
- Technical academic background
Benefits
- Base salary: $180,000–$280,000.
- Competitive equity.
- Full-time role based in New York City.
- Hybrid schedule with 3 days per week in the Flatiron office.
About Recruiting from Scratch
We’re representing a fast-growing technology company building a startup discovery and intelligence platform used by leading investors, technology companies, corporate development teams, and GTM organizations. The platform maps the startup ecosystem across tens of millions of companies, hundreds of millions of people, and hundreds of attributes per entity, helping customers discover promising companies, research opportunities, and make better decisions using proprietary data and AI-powered workflows. The company is growing revenue at 100%+ annually, has raised approximately $30M, and is already used by some of the most sophisticated organizations across AI, venture capital, and technology. The team is now building its first native iOS product, creating a new way for customers to access its data and agentic search capabilities from mobile. This engineer will have foundational ownership over what that experience becomes.